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Kitty’s Home on the Ozark Uplift 


THE 


CRESAP PENSION 


The Stery of a Perculiar Pensioa Fraud 

— BY— 

EMMA UPTON VAUGHN 

Author of 

THE LOWER BUREAU DRAWER 
and 

VHERB SHALL I BE NEXT CHRISTMAS? 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

H. E. CRAWFORD 


BURTON PUBLISHING COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS AND BOOK SELLERS 
Kansas City, mo. 

1915 


Copyrighted 1915 By 
Emme Upton Vaughn 



/ f 

DEC 20 1915 


©C/, 4420009 


DEDICA TION. 

To the memory of the idol of my childhood and 
the protector of later years, my brother^ 
Joseph Upton of Missouri, who 
was best loved where he 
was best known. 



COrSTENTB 


CHAPTER 

PAGE 

1 

The Home on the Ozark Uplift 

11 

2 

The Parting of the Ways 

25 

3 

The Midnight Ride 

35 

4 

“Earth Has No Sorrow That Heaven Cannot 



Heal” 

43 

5 

“Will the Dark Days Never Go?” 

53 

6 

The Camel Puts His Head Inside the Tent 

61 

7 

The Coming of Elder Carew 

69 

8 

The Camel Gets Wholly Inside the Tent 

75 

9 

Baby Eloise 

83 

10 

Mrs. Duane De Witt and Her Discovery 

89 

11 

“Where the Brook and River Meet” 

97 

12 

Mrs. De Witt Appears at the Cresap Farm 

107 

13 

In Bostoii Town 

119 

14 

A School Girl Friendship 

9 

127 


15 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

25 

26 

27 

28 

29 

30 

31 

32 

33 

34 


10 

137 

147 

155 

165 

176 

186 

197 

203 

211 

219 

231 

237 

247 

255 

263 

285 

293 

315 

321 

333 


CONTENTS CONTINUED 


Der Herr Professor 
Kitty Finds Her Vocation 
Five Years 'of Europe 
Kitty Leaves Home 
Back in Missouri 
Herr Steinberg’s Vindication 
The Death of Mrs. De Witt 
The St. Louis Drummer 
Mrs. Carew Writes a Letter 
Katherine Finds Eloise 
Nemesis 

Mrs. Carew is Saved From Prison 
Der Herr Professor Goes a-Wooing 
When Love Is Done 
Introducing an Old Friend 
Judge Raynor’s Find 
A Whispered Crime 
Kitty Disposes of Her Aunt’s Estate 
A Soul’s Search For Light 
“He Comes to Woo — ’’ 


The Home on the Ozark Uplifts 




CHAPTER 1. 


“Pauperize? Well, that seems a mighty curi- 
ous idea to me! It appears to me not having a 
pension would land you in the poorhouse the 
quickest I” 

Captain Ralph Cresap drew the long patient 
sigh of one who has given up the hope of making 
himself understood. Yet for the hundredth time 
he made the attempt. 

“You don’t understand, Sue. I am speaking 
of the moral effect. It is this way. I am just as 
strong as I was before the war. Stronger, because 
I believe the outdoor life in the army staved off the 
family scourge till I was past the age when the rest 
died. I am plenty able to earn our living for years 
to come. And to trump up and swear to some ail- 
ment I have not got, and then stand up at Uncle 
Sam’s corn crib and live on the lie ! Why, it would 
eat the heart out of any man’s character.” 

“Your character? Well, if you are so provok- 
ing sometimes with your queer notions, I reckon it 
would be pretty hard to hurt your character. Every- 
one in these parts knows that Capt. Cresap is the 
most respected man on the Pomme de Terre!” A 
glow of wifely pride suffused her comely, though 
coarsening, face, as she spoke. 

13 


14 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


Her husband made no answer. They were 
seated on the clean swept space in front of their 
cabin, in the shade of a native oak. 

Behind the house rose an Ozark bluff. In 
front the timber of the Pomme de Terre came up 
to the road which ran just outside the rail fence, 
whose zigzag was hid by a growth of wild rose and 
elderberry, both in bloom. The cabin fronted the 
south. On the west were the barn yard and stables ; 
on the east the farm lands stretched away. From 
a spring at the foot of the bluff the water fell into 
the trough of the spring house with a tinkle. The 
sunbeams of early June sifted cheerily down 
through the forest leaves, and brightened the rows 
of old fashioned flowers bordering the path to the 
“bars.” Some soft curls of cloud floated overhead. 
The man’s soul took refuge, as it had often done 
before, in Nature’s beauty. Instinctively, he never 
mentioned these things to his wife. 

The cabin itself was built of logs. It was long 
and low, its broad side parallel with the road. 
Through the center of it ran a hall, used as a sit- 
ting room. On the west was a large room which 
served as kitchen and dining room. The east end 
was divided into two bed rooms. A capacious 
chimney, built outside from the ground up, rose 
at each gable end. For the early seventies and 
southwest Missouri it was a fine house. It was 
considered the show place of the neighborhood; 


THE HOME ON THE OZARK UPLIFT 15 


and that meant a wide stretch of country, the near- 
est neighbor being two miles away. 

Presently a little girl of about six years 
emerged from the timber, crept through the bars, 
and came running up the path to the house. As 
she neared her parents she stopped and looked 
from one to the other a little doubtfully. 

Her father held out his arms to her. She ran 
into them and climbed on his knee. Putting her 
lips close to his ear she whispered : 

■‘‘Never mind, pa. Puss loves you; she sure 
does.” 

For answer he cuddled her closer and kissed 
the top of the golden head. 

Looking at them you would have wondered 
in the first minute how the rough looking man could 
be the little fairy’s father. In the next you would 
have perceived that the roughness was only the 
neglect of razor and shears. The features of both 
father and child were high bred, clear cut, and very 
similar. But this resemblance was partly obscured 
by the difference in coloring. His eyes looked blue 
now, though they were really steel grey. Hers 
were hazel brown, but the same steady light shown 
in both. His hair was dark ; hers golden. 

The rattle of a wagon came from down the 
road, and instantly the little group became alert. 

‘Tt ain’t the Karrs, nor the Graves,” said Mrs. 
Cresap, listening intently. “Their wagons have a 
different rattle. I know, its the Raynors. Curious, 


16 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


I was just wishing they would come over, being 
as it’s Sunday. Sure enough,” as the wagon ap- 
peared around a bend of the timber. “Guess we’ll 
have two of the speckled fries for dinner. Captain.” 

“John and I can catch ’em, ma,” interposed 
Puss. “John is awful spry!” 

She was dancing up and down with the un- 
usual excitement of company. She rarely' had a 
playmate, and John Raynor was her favorite among 
the few children she knew. 

They had walked down to the bars to greet tlie 
new comers. Mr. Raynor was helping his wife 
down from the wagon. When she turned you saw 
a slight figure clad in a fine checked gingham, and 
were not surprised at the slight inclination to 
“deown” when she said : 

“Good morning, Mrs. Cresap. It is so long 
since we had seen your folks, we thought we would 
come down.” 

“Awful glad you did. Neighbors are mighty 
scarce since the war.” Peace had been declared for 
over half a decade, but from a long habit of caution 
she lowered her voice as she added, “ ’Specially the 
right kind. So we ought to be sociable, what few 
there is of us. Come right up to the house.” 

Still talking, she lowered a bar or two, and 
Mrs. Raynor stepped through. 

“Ralph, he says he will make a gate, first 
chance he gets after the corn is laid by You all 
have one on your place, haint you' ’’ 


THE HOME ON THE OZARK UPLIFT 17 


“Yes, but it was out of fix when we came, so 
Mr. Raynor put leather hinges on it. It has to be 
lifted to open,” answered Mrs. Raynor. 

John had jumped out as soon as the wagon 
stopped and ran to Puss. 

“See what Pve brought for you,” he said, and 
uncovered a basket he held. In it a very young 
and curly black puppy lay sleeping. 

“Oh, how pretty! Can he walk? Thank you, 
John.” 

“Well, he thinks he can, I guess, but it’s rather 
wobbly. Let’s see him try.” 

He set the basket down, and gently lifted out 
the puppy. The little dog’s uncertain steps made 
the children laugh. 

“He walks just like that drunk man we saw 
the last time pa took me over to Byson,” declared 
Puss. 

“Was your pa in the army?” she presently in- 
consequently asked. 

“No,” soberly answered John. “He didn’t get 
drafted, and mamma was so poorly he wouldn’t 
enlist and leave her.” 

“Why! Would the Rebs let him stay at 
home?” asked Puss, wonderingly. 

“Wasn’t any Rebs there, little chick,” he an- 
swered. “We are from Massachusetts, you know,” 
he added, a little proudly. 

“My pa wasn’t raised here, either. He’s an 
F V., ma says.” 


18 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


‘What is an F. F. V. ?” asked John. 

“Why, ma says it means of the first families 
of Virginia,” explained Puss. 

“Oh, yes, I studied about Virginia in my geog- 
raphy. Papa taught school back home. That is 
why the folks about here call him Professor. Ain't 
it queer folks don’t have schools out here, except 
in the towns, and papa says they don’t amount to 
much.” 

“Yes, I wish they had one we could go to. But 
then pa says young ladies should have governesses 
and finish at boarding school. I have read my first 
reader through, and Esop’s fables. Pa taught me.” 

She spoke with singular precision, yet it was 
not disagreeable, as it would be in most young chil- 
dren. Her mother’s speech was the vernacular of 
that section of the country. Her father spoke cor- 
rect English except for some Virginia peculiarities. 

Mrs. Cresap had taken Mrs. Raynor in to see 
her new rag carpet. The men strolled up from the 
barn, smoking. They sat down under an oak tree 
in the door yard to finish their pipes. 

“Been arguing the pension question lately?” 
asked Mr. Raynor, a little slyly. 

“Well, yes. Sue gets at me occasionally to ap- 
ply for one,” he answered. “But you know I don’t 
believe in it.” 

“No?” The inflection was questioning, but 
Mr. Raynor knew his neighbor’s views perfectly 
well. 


THE HOME ON THE OZARK UPLIFT 19 


‘T wouldn’t grudge it to you, for one,” he con- 
tinued. ‘T didn’t get to fight myself, but I admire 
those who did. A pension is the only way we stay- 
at-homes can pay our debt to you fellows who saved 
the Union. I’ll stand my share of the taxes cheer- 
fully.” 

“That’s all right on your side, and it is all 
right for the soldiers who came out really disabled 
from wounds or exposure. But I was lucky. I 
really believe I left my tendency to consumption in 
the army. I can’t see that I am at all injured.” 

“You may not know. It is not so long ago, 
and those southern climates are very insidious. 
Something may develop yet. Not consumption,” 
he added hastily, remembering the constant fear of 
those predisposed to that disease, “but some liver 
complaint.” 

“Well, I’ll wait till it does develop. I tell you, 
Raynor,” he leaned forward and spoke impressively, 
“there is nothing on earth more demoralizing to the 
-average human being than to find another who is 
willing to play oak to his poison ivy ; and if the oak 
is the government, the moral effect is the same.” 

The other looked at him a moment closely and 
then broke out impulsively: 

“Say, how did a man of your parts come to 
drift out here, anyway?” 

Cresap started, and such a dark spasm of pain 
crossed his face at the question that Raynor has- 
tened to add : 


20 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“But you might ask me the same question, ex- 
cept that I have not your ability. You see, there 
didn’t seem much chance for a poor man back east, 
and we caught the western fever. So we sold out, 
and came by rail to St. Louis. There we bought a 
team and wagon, and started for Kansas. That is 
confidential, though. It wouldn’t add to my popu- 
larity around here tO' have it known, and there is 
no use in going over a stump when you can go 
around it. One of our horses died when we got 
to Osceola, and it had taken all we had to buy the 
outfit, so we were stranded there. Then I met 
a man who was looking for a tenant for his farm 
down here, and he furnished another horse, and 
sent me down to work the farm on shares, and we 
were glad to get the chance. But I haven’t lost sight 
of Kansas. I am going to take my homestead there 
if I live.” 

“Kansas!” All the Southwest Missourian’s, 
native or adopted, scorn of Kansas spoke in the 
tone. “Why, man, what do you want of a home- 
stead in Kansas? It will take more than one hun- 
dred and sixty acres to support your share of the 
grasshopper crop, and even they will starve to death 
in the drouths!” 

Mr. Raynor laughed, but his voice grew earnest 
as he replied: 

“I tell you Kansas has a future. Did you ever 
read Mrs. Gov. Robinson’s book on Kansas ?” . 

“No,” confessed the Captain, “I never did, but 


THE HOME ON THE OZARK UPLIFT 21 


it would take more than a woman’s book to con- 
quer my prejudice against Kansas.” 

“Have you ever been there?” asked Raynor. 

“No, I wouldn’t be caught dead there!” an- 
swered Cresap. 

“Well, how do you know it is so dreadful, 
then?” asked Raynor. 

“Have you ever been there?” retorted the 
Captain. 

“No, but ” 

“How do you know it is not so dreadful, 
then?” interrupted the other, determined not to lose 
this point. 

Then they both laughed, but Raynor returned 
to the attack. 

“But, as I was about to say, I have talked with 
people that have been there, and they say there is 
something about the place that just takes hold of 
you. The very air over there is full of life and 
vigor, and after you have lived there awhile you 
can’t be contented anywhere else. And then look 
at the settlers I That is why I spoke of Mrs. Rob- 
inson’s book. They are an intelligent, law abiding 
set, who went there with a high moral purpose. So 
soon as they have a roof over their heads, up goes 
a church and a school house. Grasshoppers and 
drouth, and other adverse conditions, will have to 
bend to a people like that.” 

“Well,” answered Captain Cresap, thought- 
fully, “there may be something in that. Still I am 


22 THE CRESAP PENSION 


willing to, let them fight the battle and win the 
glory, all by themselves. I just don’t like Kansas!’^ 
It is simply impossible to reproduce with letters ap 
old time Missourian’s pronunciation of the word 
Kansas. It has to be heard. 

The women emerged , from the house, Mrs. Cre- 
sap carrying a pan of shelled corn, and Mrs. Raynor 
a large turkey wing fan. They went toward the 
barn and the children ran after them, John having 
restored the puppy to its basket. 

“I’ll see if I can ketch the pullets. Puss,” said 
Mrs. Cresap, 

“Why do they call you Puss?” asked John as 
they followed their parents. 

“Well, you see my name is Katherine, and 
Kitty is one nickname, for that, and kitties are some- 
times called puss, and so I am Puss,” laughed the 
child. 

Mrs. Cresap scattered the corn, calling to the 
chickens meanwhile. They came running, and gath- 
ered at her feet in a cackling group. Making a 
quick dive, she caught one. Handing it to John, 
she repeated the process, and the procession went 
back to the house with the squawking captives. 

Several hours later they sat down to a sub- 
stantial dinner of fried chicken, biscuits and new 
■peas, with a custard for dessert. Screen doors were 
undreamed of at that time and place, and the flies 
were kept from the table by the slow moving back 
and forth of a leafy branch. 


THE HOME ON THE OZARK UPLIFT 23 


Afterward the children played through the 
long, happy afternoon, and their elders sat in the 
door yard and talked. 

‘T am very glad you came over. Professor,” 
said Captain Cresap, as he shook hands with his 
guest at parting. “We agree pretty well for a 
Down-easter and a Virginian, except on Kansas.” 

At early twilight Puss lay in her little bed close 
by an open window, through which came the 
scent of a dew wet sweet briar. Looking out and 
up she could see a nighthawk cutting its darting 
flight against the after glow still left in the sky. 
The drone of her parents’ voices came to her faintly. 
The bells tinkled from the pasture, and a whippoor- 
will called from the woods. The sunset glow faded 
out, and the first star of evening glimmered through 
the violet haze. Then another and another fol- 
lowed till the moonless sky seemed to pulse with 
them. She could measure their flight by singling 
out one just rising above the timber, and watching 
it climb higher and higher till it was lost among its 
myriad companions ; then turning her head she fixed 
her eyes on one not far above the barn, saw it near 
the roof, dip behind it, and disappear. The beauty 
of it all sank into her young soul and grew. Clasp- 
ing her hands over her innocent breast she mur- 
mured, “Now I lay me,” and sank to sleep. 






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Tbe t^arting of the Wayfl^ 



CHAPTER li. 


Three years had passed away. 

With a merry shout of victory the foremost oi 
three horseback riders dashed up to the ford of the 
Pomme de Terre, and slackened her rein that her 
pony might drink. 

‘T won!’’ she called, turning in her saddle to 
face her companions, a boy of fourteen and a girl 
of fifteen, who rode in beside her, and also allowed 
their horses to drink. 

“Oh, well, you had a saddle, or I’ll bet a snip 
like you wouldn’t a beat me. I was afraid this old 
blanket would turn,” responded the older girl. 
Despite the fact that a blanket strapped on with 
a surcingle did duty for a saddle, she could ride on 
a gallop. 

A big, black Newfoundland came panting up, 
and going into the water, began to swim and Up 
at the same moment. 

“Dear old Tige,” said the younger girl, turn- 
ing to the boy. “He is the best present you ever 
gave me, John.” 

“I am glad you have him. Puss. It makes it 
safer for you to ride alone. Let’s go out under 
the old sycamore and rest.” 

27 


28 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


They rode out of the stream into the shade of 
a large sycamore on its east bank. 

“How nice and cool it looks in the cave today/^ 
said Puss, pointing across the stream to a large 
opening in the bluff on the other side. 

“Yes, but this is good enough. Puss, what are 
you going to do when you grow up?” 

“Write a book,” promptly responded Puss. 
“I am going to put you in it, John.” 

“Thank you,” John laughed. “But I don’t 
care much for fame, unless there’s money in it. 
Now I am going to get rich.” 

“Fd rather write a book like David Copper- 
field than be rich,” said Puss. 

“Well, I’ll take the money. But can you even 
read David Copperfield, Puss?” 

“Why, there are some big words I can’t make 
out, quite, but pa read it through, out loud, of 
evenings, last winter, and I understood most every 
word. I cried over Steerforth’s death.” 

“Well, you are smart,” cried John admiringly. 
“But you see. Puss, money is so awfully handy. 
Now papa read Burns to us last winter. I couldn’t 
see much sense to it, mostly, but one place it said 
something I liked so much I went to work and 
learned the lines by heart. There were only six of 
them,” he continued, laughing, “or maybe I couldn’t 
have done it. They are: 

“Gather gear by every wile — know what ‘gear’ 
means, Puss?” 


THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 


29 


“Oh, yes. Pa read ‘The Heart of Midlothian’ 
last winter, too. It means — oh, things you own, 
you know.” 

“Yes, kind of property. Well, Burns says: 
‘Gather gear by every wile 
That’s justified by honor; 

Not for tO' throw it in a hedge, 

Nor for a train attendant; 

But for the glorious privilege 
Of being independent.’ 

“Papa said Burns had such a hard time. He 
had to work at things he didn’t like, and knuckle 
to the big-bugs, to make a living for his wife 
and children; and he had to put by the things he 
did like to do.” 

“What on earth air you’uns talkin’ about?” 
broke in their companion, whose big black eyes had 
been traveling from one to the other with a puzzled 
look. “I can’t make out anything you say, and I’m 
goin’ over to that wild cherry tree and eat some 
cherries.” 

She rode off and was presently standing on 
her horse under the cherry tree and bending down 
and breaking off the cherry laden branches. 

“Oh, dear,” Puss said. “That’s just like her 
and all the rest of them about here. What will I 
do when you are gone, John? Nobody but you and 
pa seems to understand me when I talk about the 
things I really care for,” and the hazel eyes grew 
wistful. 


.30 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“Never mind,” consoled John. “We are not 
going for two whole weeks yet, and you will have 
your papa left. And Puss” — his voice lowered, and 
grew tender — “I am glad Lottie Wilson left us 
alone a minute. I have been wanting to tell you. 
When r get rich I am going to come back and get 
you, so I will!” and his face flushed and his blue 
eyes looked very determined. 

“Then you will have to get pa, too,” she an- 
swered. 

“All right, him, too. Only I want to live in 
Kansas, and your papa won’t go there.” 

“I guess he would follow me, if I went, John,” 
she laughed. “Come, Firefly is rested now. Let’s 
us go and get some cherries, too,” and she started 
her pony toward the clump of cherry trees. 

John followed humming the tune of “Katie 
Lee and Willie Gray,” and the particular words he 
had in mind were : — 

“Men are only boys grown tall. 

Hearts don’t change much, after all !” 

The two weeks passed rapidly away. After 
packing all their goods in a covered wagon, the 
Raynors went to spend the night before the start 
with the Cresaps. It was a warm evening in early 
summer. A full moon shone bright in the heavens, 
and the two families sat in the door yard and talked. 

“Are there really Indians out there, Mr. Ray- 
nor?” asked Puss. 

“Yes, quite a few, I believe. But they are 


THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 


31 


tame Indians and won’t scalp us, Puss,” he an- 
swered. 

‘‘There is more danger from quarrels among 
the settlers themselves, I reckon,” said Captain 
Cresap. “There was a man from there going 
through here the other day. He said there was a 
good deal of bitter feeling there still.” 

“Wonder if that was the man who camped 
near our house last week. Did he have his family 
■with him?” asked Raynor. 

“Yes, he had his wife and two children, a boy 
and a girl. It was one day last week, and I think 
he would make your place about camping time.” 

“We had quite a chat. We all went over and 
talked with them,” said Mr. Raynor. 

“The boy was about my age,” put in John, 
“and he was telling me about Lawrence. They 
same from there. He said they had such a good 
school there. His teacher had been a Mrs. Car- 
penter, whose husband was killed in the Quantrell 
raid. The guerrillas took Mr. Carpenter out into 
the yard, and Mrs. Carpenter ran out and threw her 
•arms around him, but the men tore her away, and 
shot him before her eyes. She always wore black, 
and was so sad, but all the children loved her. And 
the boy said that when he was in the lower room 
all the boys and girls were divided into two parties. 
One party were the friends of the Lane girl, and 
one of the Jenkins girl. Most of them took the 


32 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


Jenkins girl’s part, because the Lanes girl’s father 
had killed Mr. Jenkins.” 

‘‘Well, I should think, from all I have heard 
about that affair, that the majority of the children 
were in the right. Of course, they thought of it 
just as their parents did,” said Captain Cresap. 

“Say, did you ever hear that Jim Lane used 
to travel with a circus ?” asked Mr. Raynor. 

“No, I don’t believe I ever heard that one on 
him, but he had such an adventurous life that he 
was liable to have done most anything,” answered 
Cresap. 

“I don’t know as to its truth, that is, my in- 
formant may have been mistaken, but when I was 
in Osceola, just before we came down here, you 
know, I was in a store one day, and a man there 
had a newspaper with a cut of Lane in it. Another 
man came in and happened to look over the shoulder 
of the man who had the paper. 

“ ‘Well, I’ll be darned,’ he said, ‘if there ain’t 
that fellow that run the wheel of fortune at the last 
circus that came along here before the war!’ 

“ ‘Why, man, this is a picture of Col. James H. 
Lane, of Kansas,’ said the other. 

“ ‘Well, I don’t care what he calls himself,’ the 
other retorted, ‘that’s the man I lost my money to 
that day. It was the first money I had ever earned, 
and the last I ever lost — that way, at least — so I 
have nothing against the fellow, as far as that’s 


THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 


33 


concerned. He’s done worse things than that, 
since, sure !’ ” 

“The man is right. He has done worse if half 
that is told of him is true,” said Captain Cresap. 
“The war sure did leave some queer people on top, 
along with its real heroes !” 

“This man who' came through last week was 
telling about Lane’s funeral, too,” went on Mr. 
Raynor. “It_was four or five years ago that he 
killed himself. They brought him down to Law- 
rence to bury him, and most all the town turned out 
to do him honor.” 

“Yes, the boy was telling me about the band 
that played that day,” said John. “He said it was 
the first band he had ever heard.” 

“Well, peace to his ashes,” said Captain Cre- 
sap. “He did some valiant service on the right side, 
after all. By the way, did you ever hear the story 
about the little girl’s prayer. Professor?” 

“Guess not. I don’t seem to recall it. What 
was it?” 

“They say it really happened over here a piece. 
A family was going to move to Kansas, and they 
didn’t get much encouragement from the neigh- 
bors, you may be sure; but no one supposed the 
children noticed the talk till the mother put them 
to bed the night before the start. Then one little 
girl after offering her usual petitions to the throne 
of grace, added gravely and reverently : — 

“ ‘Goodbye, God, we’re going to Kansas V ” 


34 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“Well,” said Mr. Raynor, after the laugh had 
subsided, “I don’t feel that way at all. In fact I 
feel just the other way. But Annie and I, yes, and 
John, too, are genuinely sorry to leave you folks. 
Your friendship has been the bright spot in our 
lives here.” 

“We are sorry to see you go, too,” heartily re- 
sponded the Captain. “There are not many people 
around here with whom one can do much more than 
pass the time of day.” 

Bright and early in the morning both families 
were astir. Breakfast was eaten, and then the big 
covered wagon was driven out into the road, and 
headed for the west. The elders shook hands, and 
Mr. and Mrs. Raynor kissed Puss. The departing 
family climbed into the wagon, and it moved off 
amid a last calling of goodbyes. The Cresaps stood 
watching it till it disappeared around a bend in 
the timber. As they turned away Mrs. Cresap 
caught sight of her little daughter’s face, working 
with the effort to keep from crying. 

“Never mind. Puss,” she said, “John will be 
like Bobby Shafto. ‘He’ll come back and marry 
me,’ you know.” 

“Don’t put such ideas into the child’s head,” 
said Captain Cresap, a little sharply. “Of course, 
she is sorry to lose her only playmate,” and he held 
out his hand to his daughter. 

But after a quick grateful glance in her father’s 
face, Puss turned with a little sob, and ran off to 
the barn to bear her first sorrow alone. 


The Midnight Ride. 









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CHAPTER III. 


One chilly autumn afternoon, two years later, 
captain Cresap came into his home, saying: 

“Sue, I don’t feel very well. Reckon I will 
gO and lie down a while,” and passed into the bed 
room. 

His wife followed him and laid her hand on 
nis forehead. 

“You seem chilly,” she said, “I’ll cover you up 
good and maybe you can sleep it off.” 

Having done so she went back into the sitting 
room, and sat down before the open fireplace. 
There was quite a bed of coals, but she threw on 
some more wood. For quite a time she sat idly 
looking into the fire. Then her gaze fixed on a 
small stone in the rough masonry of the fireplace. 
The thought that it looked loose crossed her mind. 
At last she leaned forward and took hold of each 
side of it where the mortar had fallen away. Yes, 
it was loose, and she drew it out. 

As she did so a small black picture case, that 
had evidently been standing on its edge behind the 
stone, fell forward. She took it up. It was one 
of those composition cases in which the “likenesses” 
of those days were often kept. She opened it and 
moved it from side to side till the light fell on it at 

37 


38 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


the correct angle, and then the face of a proud, 
beautiful girl of about sixteen looked up at her 
with the pearly uncertainty of the early Daguerreo- 
type. 

She looked at it, jealousy and anger surging 
up within her. 

*Tt is his old Virginia sweetheart” she thought. 
“I always knew he had one. He acts so queer 
sometimes. I declare if it don’t look like Puss, only 
not so sweet tempered. That is why he is so fond 
of the child. He always did like her better than 
me. There !” 

With the last word she tossed the case into 
the fire where the coals glowed hottest. Then, re- 
membering her husband’s peculiar temper, slow to 
anger but implacable when roused, she seized the 
poker and raked it out on the hearth. 

But the fierce heat had already warped and 
ruined it, and she pushed it back into the fire, and 
covered it with live coals. 

‘‘Sue,” called her husband from the bed room. 
She started and turned pale, but rose and went to 
him. 

“I don’t seem to get warm,” he said, “and my 
chest pains dreadfully. Will you get me a dose of 
that cordial, please?” 

She got the medicine and poured it out with 
an unsteady hand. 

“You must have an ague chill,” she said. 

“It don’t seem like that,” he answered, “I don’t 


THE MIDNIGHT RIDE 


39 


remember the ague ever feeling like a knife turn- 
ing in my lungs.” 

She turned and looked at him, and a sudden 
fear smote through her. 

“Why, that is like lung fever,” she cried. 
“You ought to have broke up that cough. I’ll go 
get that flatiron on the hearth and put it at your 
feet, and put some liniment on your chest.” 

She forgot her anger of a moment before and 
went to work with a will. Susan Cresap loved her 
husband with all there was of her, which was con- 
siderable physically, less mentally, and least mor- 
ally. Still people no better than she have managed 
to glide through life enjoying the full respect of 
their neighbors, simply because their equally weak 
natures never happened to meet the temptations 
that assailed her. 

Now she applied the remedies she had sug- 
gested, but they brought Captain Cresap no relief. 

Puss came in, a slight tall girl of eleven, her 
iiazel eyes a shade darker, her gold hair turning 
auburn, but still retaining many bright threads. 
Her quick gaze sought her father and a shadow fell 
on her face. 

“What’s the matter? Is pa sick?” she anx- 
iously questioned. 

“Yes, he can’t seem to get warm,” answered 
her mother. 

Captain Cresap greeted his daughter with a 
smile. 


40 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“I’m warmer now,” he said, “too warm, in 
fact. But it hurts me worse than ever to breathe.” 

As evening set in his fever rose higher and 
higher. For hours the anxious wife and daughter 
worked with him, but nothing seemed to alleviate 
the pain, and he began to get delirious. 

It was midnight when the two frightened 
watchers stood by the lamp in the sitting room and 
looked at each other in blank dismay. 

“I do wish somebody would happen by to send 
for the doctor,” wailed Mrs. Cresap, breaking down. 

Then the blood of a long line of brave Vir- 
ginians awoke in Katherine Cresap, and a sudden 
resolve set the young face. 

-“Mother, I am going for the doctor!” she 
said. 

“You, child! At this time of night! No, no, 
if anything happened to you I could never forgive 
myself. And your father wouldn’t either.” 

“But it isn’t as if you sent me. I am going 
of myself. It is moonlight, and I won’t take Fire- 
fly. I’ll ride Sir Guy, and take Tige along. Noth- 
ing in this part of the country can catch Sir Guy.’^ 
She was putting on a coat as she spoke. 

Then she went out into the moonlight. Her 
mother followed her, feebly expostulating, but the 
girl went to the barn, got the big black horse of 
racing breed, that was her father’s pride, from his 
stall, saddled him, and led him out in front of the 
gate, while Tige capered around them. 



f 



The Midnight Ride 






THE MIDNIGHT RIDE 


41 


‘Tt is only six miles, mother, and the doctor 
will come back with me. We will be back in less 
than two hours.” 

She put her foot in the stirrup, and swung into 
the saddle. The spirited horse reared, and then 
went down the road like an arrow, followed by the 
big Newfoundland, like a small shadow at his heels. 

On through the still night they sped, high re- 
solve nerving the child. She was thoroughly fright- 
ened, and could nearly hear her heart keep time to 
the hoof beats of her horse, but no thought of turn- 
ing back once entered her mind. It is not those 
who do not know fear that are bravest, but those 
who conquer it at duty’s call. 

The worst place to go through was a wood, 
in which, it was rumored through the country side, 
two big gray timber wolves had been seen; these 
animals having become common in the desolation 
of the closing years of the war, and were still not 
entirely exterminated. 

As she neared this timber an owl called from 
it and Puss shivered as she remembered tales her 
father had told about these cries being used as sig- 
nals by the bushwhackers ; but she set her teeth and 
struck Sir Guy with the end of the bridle rein. He 
responded with a burst of speed that left Tige pant- 
ing in the rear, and soon Puss was before the doc- 
tor’s house. 

Luckily the house was built close to the fence, 
and when the barking of his dogs aroused the doc- 


42 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


tor, Puss was able to call to him without dismount- 
ing among them. 

Dr. Hazlewood hastened to dress, got his horse 
and saddle bags, and soon they were galloping on 
the homeward way, the doctor’s less speedy horse 
having a hard time to keep up with the girl’s 
thoroughbred. 


I 


“Earth Has No Sorrow That Heaven Cannot Heal.*' 



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CHAPTER IV. 


“O, Dr. Hazlewood, I am so glad you have 
come !” was Mrs. Cresap’s greeting as she came out 
into the yard to meet them. 

It was not Puss’s habit to interrupt her elders, 
but now she intercepted the doctor’s reply to ask 
breathlessly : 

“Is he any better, ma?” 

“I can’t see any change,’' answered Mrs. Cre- 
sap. “He is still out of his head.” 

“Then you had better tell me the symptoms of 
the case, yourself. Your brave little daughter and 
I rode so fast we had no breath for talking,” said 
the doctor. 

Mrs. Cresap gave him the desired information, 
and then she and the doctor entered the sick man’s 
room. 

It seemed hours to Puss before they came back 
to the sitting room. She looked searchingly into 
Dr. Hazlewood’s face, but could read little comfort 
there. 

“Is it lung fever, doctor?” almost whispered 
Mrs. Cresap. 

“Yes, I fear there is little doubt that it is 
pneumonia; and I feel that I ought to warn you 
that it is a severe case, both sides being involved. 

45 


46 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


His lungs were probably weakened by exposure 
during the war,” gravely answered Dr. Hazlewood. 

Just then Mrs. Cresap was most concerned by 
the first part of this speech, but some months after- 
wards she particularly recalled the latter sentence. 

“Have you no relatives in this part of the coun- 
try who might come and see you through?” con- 
tinued the doctor, loath to leave them alone at such 
a crisis. 

“No, my folks live down beyond Springfield, 
and there is no one to send, and perhaps they could 
not come, anyway,” answered Mrs. Cresap. 

“Well, I will go home and send over my Uncle 
Eph and Aunt Peggy. They wouldn’t leave me 
after freedom, you know. I’ll lend them to you 
till you can make some other arrangements,” said 
the doctor. 

“If you can spare them, I should be mighty 
glad to have them, though we must not let the 
Captain know of it. He just hates niggers, and 
won’t have one on the place. That is why he has 
had to work so hard himself.” 

“That is a strange prejudice for one reared 
with them.” 

“Yes, but that is the w^y he feels about it. 
When are you coming again?” 

“I’ll be back before noon sometime, and the 
colored folks will come as soon as they can. Be 
very sure to give all the medicine,” said the doctor 
stepping out into the night. 


NO SORROW THAT HEAVEN CANNOT HEAL 47 


Mrs. Cresap tried to get her daughter to go 
to bed, but Puss quietly refused, and they went into 
the sick room together. 

For a time the Captain dozed under the influ- 
ence of some medicine, though he occasionally 
moved restlessly, and his breath was labored; then 
he began to murmur, and at last his eyes opened 
wide. 

“There’s Nell — and P’erre — down on the river 
road — they are letting their horses walk, and their 
heads are close together. Nell Gwynne she should 
have been named, but the Gwynne’s sin was natural, 
at least, and Nell’s — curse her — curse her for the 
blackness of the shame she brought on the Cresap 
name !” 

Mrs. Cresap leaned over the bed. 

“What are you talking about, Ralph?” she 
asked. 

“Did I say anything? What did I say?” wildly 
demanded the Captain, sitting up in the bed. 

Katherine gently drew her mother away, and 
took her place. 

“Nothing, pa,” she said soothingly. “Nothing 
at all that we could understand.” 

The Captain fell back in a fit of coughing. 
They raised him and held him upright through it. 
When Mrs. Cresap drew away the handkerchief 
with which he had wiped his lips, there was on it 
a crimson stain which she hid from Katherine. The 


48 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


pacient lay still for a time, and then began to talk 
again. 

“There is the chapel,” he said. “Dear little 
church! I was baptized and confirmed in it — now 

they are singing — listen 

‘Go ask the infidel what boon he brings us. 

What charm for aching hearts he can reveal, 
Like that sweet promise faith sings unto us. 

Earth has no sorrow heaven cannot heal.’ ” 

Then he dozed off again into an uneasy 
slumber. 

Just after daylight Uncle Eph and Aunt Peggy 
arrived. With the docile faithfulness of the old 
time slaves they set to work, one tO' prepare break- 
fast, and the other to care for the stock. 

The morning wore away. The doctor came 
before noon as he promised. He did not give any 
more encouragement than on his night visit, and 
Mrs. Cresap noticed with increased uneasiness that 
he changed the medicines. 

In the afternoon some of the neighbors, who 
had been appealed to by the doctor, began to come 
in. They were few, for the country was sparsely 
settled, but among them watches for the night were 
chosen. 

For three days the fever climbed steadily 
higher, but on the afternoon of the fourth day it 
began to fall, leaving the patient very weak, but 
conscious. 

“Where is Puss” were his first rational words. 


NO SORROW THAT HEAVEN CANNOT HEAL 49 


“Here I am, pa,” she said, coming forward. 
“I will give you your medicine, and call ma.” 

“Give me the medicine, but don’t call anyone, 
Katherine. I want to speak to you.” 

Awed by the tone and the unaccustomed use 
of her full name, she gave him his medicine, and 
then stood waiting. 

“Listen, Katherine,” he said feebly but very 
firmly, “you have an Aunt Eleanor. She used to 
be Eleanor Cresap. I don’t know what she calls 
herself now. She was a little older than I, but near 
enough my age that I loved her best of all my sis- 
ters. But she did something bad — so bad that I 
cannot pollute your ears with the horror of it. 
When I am gone she may try to make atonement 
by enriching you, but you must never accept a penny 
from her.” 

“I won’t, indeed I won’t, father,” cried the 
child, with an awful sinking of heart at the ex- 
pression, “When I am gone.” 

“You are a good girl, Katherine, but you may 
be evilly advised. Get the big Bible, please.” 

She lifted the heavy book from a stand and 
brought it to him. 

“Lay it on the bed,” he said. “Put your right 
hand on it and say this after me : — 

“I solemnly swear never knowingly to accept 
any aid from my Aunt Eleanor Cresap, by what- 
ever name she may be known, so help me God!” 

The girl repeated the oath word for word. 


50 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


Somewhere in her narrow, but deep reading, she 
had received the impression that it was customary 
to kiss the Bible to complete an oath, so now she 
gravely and reverently stooped and kissed the 
sacred book. Then she quickly turned and flung 
her arms about her father’s neck, and clung to him, 
sobbing. He put his arms about her, and broke 
down, too. 

The sounds of grief were heard by Mrs. Cresap 
and an incoming neighbor, and they quickly entered 
the room, and the friend led Katherine away. 

“Come close to me. Sue,” said Captain Cresap. 
“I have been delirious, have I not?” 

“Yes, you have been a little flighty,” answered 
his wife. 

“Did I say anything strange?” he asked 
quickly. 

“Oh no, nothing out of the way. You repeated 
some hymns you used to sing back at your home, 
and things like that.” 

He lay still for a moment, feebly considering. 
There were some things he wanted to say, some 
sacred and solemn things; but he had become so 
used to living one side — the higher side — of his life 
apart from his wife, that he hesitated to speak of 
them even now, in the moment which he felt to be 
supreme, for fear of feeling the old dead wall of 
non-comprehension rise up between them. Oh, the 
infinite pity of it! that so many of earth’s millions 
live in their “individual wilderness,” out of soul 


NO SORROW THAT HEAVEN CANNOT HEAL 51 


touch with those of their own household, and seldom 
or never finding the answering spirit. Is the meet- 
ing of it one of the joys beyond belief reserved for 
eternity ? 

“Will you read the twenty-third Psalm, please, 
Susan ?” he said at last. “I meant to ask Puss, but 
the poor child broke down.’' 

Susan opened the Bible, still lying on the bed, 
and read the Psalm with an unsteady voice. 

“The valley of the shadow,” the sick man mur- 
mured. “I must forgive even Eleanor now. Can 
you read the fifteenth of Corinthians, too?” 

His wife found that scripture, but had not read 
far when he interrupted : 

“Please stop for a while, Susan. There is 
something I must say, and I am getting strangely 
faint. I want to speak to you about the pension. 
Promise me you won’t apply for one.” 

“Why,” she said in a feeble attempt to ignore 
the shadow darkening over the house, “I am not 
likely to. You may outlive me.” 

“I shall not outlive you,” he said solemnly. 
“Promise me now. Say, I promise not to apply for 
a pension.” 

“I promise not to apply for a pension,” she 
said, frightened into obedience. 

The thought of asking her, too, to make oath, 
crossed his mind, but what was it caught at his 
breath so? He must hasten. 


52 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“You won't need the pension. I hid a box of 

gold — in war time " 

He stopped for breath, and when he went on 
omitted unnecessary words. 

“The right hand side of the fireplace — loose 
stone — ^behind it — picture case — Nell — behind pic- 
ture a paper — ^tells where gold is. Send Puss to 

good school — take care of her " 

He sank back exhausted. Mrs. Cresap leaned 
forward. 

“Where is the box?" she hoarsely whispered. 
“Maybe I can't find the paper." 

He made an attempt to speak, but could not. 
When the neighbor and Katherine came at his wife's 
frightened call, they found her leaning over a body 
from which the soul had fled. 


‘‘Will tlhe Dark Day* Never Go?” 



% 


CHAPTER V. 


The following winter was unusually long and 
severe. Snow covered the ground the greater part 
of the time, baffling Mrs. Cresap’s attempts to 
search for the buried treasure. 

Buried she was sure it must be. During the 
war that had been the customary way of hiding 
all valuables that would stand the process. But 
where ? It could not be under any of the floors of 
the house, for Captain Cresap had never been left 
at home alone, since they had lived on the place, 
long enough to secret it so. 

“Do you think it might be in the cave, some- 
where, Puss?” she asked one day. 

“I do not know, mamma,” Puss answered a 
little wearily, lifting a pale face from her book. 
“When the snow melts, we can go and see.” 

“Yes, it will be better not to go before, I 
reckon. Somebody might see our tracks and take 
to searching, too. Be sure you don’t tell anyone. 
Puss.” 

“I am hardly likely to, mamma.” Since her 
father’s death she had added the other syllable to 
her mother’s title. “There is no one to tell but 
Uncle Eph and Aunt Peggy.” 

Dr. Hazlewood had moved to the county seat , 

55 


56 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


of an adjoining county, and his colored people had 
hired out to Mrs. Cresap to work the farm, an out- 
building having been put in habitable shape for 
their cabin. 

“Mamma,” the child presently added, timidly, 
“would you mind not calling me Puss any more?” 

“Why, child, what shall I call you? Katherine 
is such a mouthful?” 

“You might call me Kitty,” suggested the girl. 

“Well, I don’t care. I suppose it does sound 
more grown up. And you are big for your age.” 

That was not at all the reason that Puss wanted 
the change. She fancied that the name Puss was, 
in some way, sacred to her father’s use. But like 
her father she shrank from mentioning her finer 
feelings to her mother. 

The change in name was made, however, and 
from that day forward she was known as Kitty. 

In looking back on her life afterward, that 
winter stood out in clear relief for its loneliness, and 
sadness, and desolation. Not a half dozen times 
did they see anyone outside of their own household. 
There was no work she could do, her mother doing 
all that Aunt Peggy did not get done. She was 
thrown on her reading more than ever. But for- 
tunately her books, though few, were well chosen. 

The Bible, the Prayer Book, Shakespeare, the 
best works of Thackery, Dickens, and Scott, and a 
volume of Tennyson, comprised her father’s entire 
library. But these she assimilated as the modern 


WILL THE DARK DAYS NEVER GO 57 


skimmer, breathlessly chasing the newest book, can 
not. She was particularly attracted to “The Vir- 
ginians” from its associations with her father’s early 
home, but perhaps her favorite was Tennyson. 
Young as she was she grappled vaguely with “The 
Two Voices,” and without the least conscious ef- 
fort she knew most of “In Memoriam” by heart. 

In February there came a thaw and they went 
over to the cave near the ford of the Pomme de 
Terre. They rode their horses through the ford, 
tied them, and went along the narrow ledge between 
the water and the cliff to the mouth of the cave. 
This was a natural chamber in the rock, the entrance 
large enough to let in sufficient light to see, dimly, 
to its farthest sides. There was no other outlet 
to it. 

They lit the candles they had brought with 
them, and carefully explored the floor, the sides, 
and the roof, of the cave, but could find no trace 
of man’s disturbance, in the formation of the rocky 
walls. 

Indeed, the floor was nearly one continuous 
rock, and the ceiling was formed in the same way. 
The side walls were more broken, projecting as 
shelves in some places, but no hollow sound came 
back at the tap of the hammer Mrs. Cresap had 
brought with her. She would not give up, how- 
ever, until both candles were burned out. 

“I don’t see how we are going to make a living 
and pay off the mortgage with just the farm,” said 


58 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


Mrs. Cresap, as she led her horse beside a large 
rock to mount. “I wish I had not promised your 
father not to apply for a pension.” 

“But you couldn’t have refused anything he 
asked then,” said Kitty. 

“No, but I wish he had not asked me that.” 

“He thought we would have the treasure, you 
know, mamma,” answered Kitty, warm in her 
father’s defense. “There must be plenty of it, or 
he would not have wanted to send me to boarding 
school.” 

“Well, I just wish I could find it,” sighed her 
mother. 

Every night Mrs. Cresap thought of a new 
hiding place, and every day investigated it, but no 
treasure trove rewarded her efforts. She had 
never told her daughter of the Daguerreotype and 
the clue her husband had tried to give her, but she 
bitterly regretted the destroying of that clue. 

“Don’t see why he couldn’t have told me where 
it was instead of talking about that blamed picture,” 
she thought to herself. “It wouldn’t have took any 
longer, but then he always was queer.” 

The winter wore away. The violet succeeded 
the spring beauty in the wood, and the painted cup^ 
followed the white erythronium on the prairie. 
The blue bird flitted through the new leaves of the 
trees, and the meadow lark trilled in the open. 


WILL THE DARK DAYS NEVER GO 59 


Spring’s eternal resurgam spoke its message to 
Kitty’s heart, and she learned to smile again ; while 
her dead father, exalted to the ideal now, became 
more and more a sacred memory. 






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The Camel Puts His Head Inside the Tent. 


I 



CHAPTER VI. 


“Kitty, I am going up to Monkton tomorrow, 
so we will have to get up early,” said Mrs. Cresap 
one morning in the early summer. 

“Why, mamma, what are you going up there 
for? Why don’t you go to By son?” 

“Oh, I have a lot of trading to do, and don’t 
you remember Lottie Wilson said yesterday she had 
heard things was cheaper up there?” 

“May I go, too.” 

“Not this time, child. Uncle Eph can go with 
me, and you and Peggy can mind the garden and 
the chickens.” 

“Aunt Peggy could do that by herself, 
mamma,” laughed Kitty. 

“I suppose things are cheaper at Monkton be- 
cause it is harder to get at, and they are glad to 
sell them for anything,” she added. “But I have 
never been there but once, I should like to go today.” 

“Now, don’t bother and I will get you that 
new dress, and then you may go next time to show 
it,” consoled her mother. 

Kitty had always been a bidable child, and she 
said no more about wanting to take the trip. 

The next day Mrs. Cresap got home just at 
dusk, and hastened to display a new hat for Kitty 

63 


64 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


in addition to the pretty calico dress pattern. 
Calico was at that time the dressy wear of the 
country side. For every day they wore homespun 
linsey. They had acquired those habits of dress 
during the war. 

“Thank you, mamma, they are very pretty,” 
said Kitty. “Who did you see in town?” 

“Oh, no one you know, or me either, hardly,” 
answered Mrs. Cresap. 

“What did you do all day, mamma?” 

“Dear me, child,” answered her mother 
rather sharply, “we was on the road most of the 
day. I had only a little while in town. Only just 
time enough to do my trading.” 

The dress was made. The hat chanced to be 
becoming. At that time the country milliners 
brought on just twO' styles of hats each season, 
and their patrons chose the one that was the least 
unbecoming. It was all the choice they had. 

Mrs. Cresap soon announced her intention of 
visiting Monkton again, and said Kitty might go, 
too. On the morning of the trip Kitty surveyed 
her reflection in the mirror with great content- 
ment. The calico was pink, and the wreath of roses 
on the hat matched it in color, and the pink went well 
with the hazel brown eyes and wild rose cheeks. 
But she soon had cause to forget her appearance. 

The county seat of the county in which die 
Cresap farm was situated is built on a bluff in a 
bend of the Pomme de Terre, and is not easily ac- 


CAMEL PUTS HIS HEAD INSIDE TENT 65 


cessible. For what reason it was so located in the 
early days no man now knows, but naturally the 
property owners of the town wish it to stay there, 
and quite as natulrally most of the county people wish 
it changed to some place more easily gotten at. At 
one time the controversy between the two factions 
waxed warm, and then the jail burned down. The 
town people got the county to build another before 
the latter got fairly awake. Then the court house 
burned, too ; but this time the county, being aroused, 
refused to authorize the necessary tax levy. Then 
the citizens of Monkton and other opponents of 
the moving of the county seat made up a purse of 
five thousand dollars, built a new court house, and 
presented it to the county. That settled the ques- 
tion. 

The Cresap homestead was near the south line 
of the county. The county to the southeast pro- 
jected its northwest corner into it in such a manner 
that its county seat, the town of Byson, was as near 
to the farm as Monkton, and was much easier to 
reach. In addition Byson was the better town, be- 
ing quite a business center for all that railroadless 
part of the country. 

All the neighborhood, consequently, traded at 
Byson, the farmers and their families never going 
to Monkton at all except on those rare occasions 
when business must be transacted at their own 
county seat. These things were the reasons for 


66 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


Kitty’s surprise when her mother first announced 
her intention of visiting Monkton. 

On this occasion she and her mother were pass- 
ing by a notary’s office fronting on the square, 
when they met Dr. Hazlewood. 

“Just the place to meet you, Mrs. Cresap,” he 
exclaimed. “Come into Simpson’s office here, and 
I will make that affidavit you wrote about, right 
now.” 

Mrs. Cresap reddened and glanced at Kitty. 
She had not meant to attend to any of that busi- 
ness today. Then her face hardened and assumed 
a defiant look. She shook her head at her daugh- 
ter warningly as she followed Dr. Hazlewood into 
the lawyer’s office. Kitty, though puzzled at her 
mother’s half angry, half deprecatory look, naturally 
went in, too. She did not yet understand. 

But when Dr. Hazlewood began to dictate to 
the notary a statement to the effect that he had at- 
tended the late Captain Cresap through his last, and 
several previous illnesses, and that he professionally 
attributed the weakness of his patient’s lungs to 
exposure during the war, a look of distress began 
to grow on Kitty’s face. Then indignation began 
to mix with it. 

The men were too absorbed in the business in 
hand to notice her, but her mother, though taking 
care to avoid her eye, observed her growing anger, 
and it aroused her own. Already vexed with her- 
self she easily transferred her resentment to Kitty.. 


CAMEL PUTS HIS HEAD INSIDE TENT 67 


What business was it of hers? She was not going 
to be “bossed” by a snip of a girl. 

Mrs. Cresap hurried her daughter from the 
office and into the principal store so soon as the 
affidavit was in her possession; and she gave no 
chance for any questions till they were out of town 
on their homeward way. 

“Mamma, you have applied for a pension!” 
then said Kitty. It was not a question, but an ac- 
cusation. 

“Yes, I have!” defiantly answered her mother. 
She had been irritated all the afternoon by the 
cloud on her daughter’s face. 

“But you promised pa you wouldn’t,” reminded 
the girl. “On his deathbed, too!” she went on, 
chokingly. 

“Oh! Well, you wouldn’t have me contrary- 
ing him at such a time. Beside, I meant it then. 
Reckon I have a right to change my mind,” pettishly 
answered Mrs. Cresap. 

“Don’t be so foolish, Kitty,” she went on 
presently, the girl having broken into sobs. “The 
government owes it to us, and I reckon it won’t 
break it up to pay us. It is all foolishness to be so 
romantical and set up your notions against mine 
and Dr. Hazlewood’s. He thinks it is all right” 

“But he don’t know about your promise. And 
pa always said the government did not owe him 
anything. He used to say that it had paid him all 
it had agreed to, right along.” 


68 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


Mrs. Cresap drove on awhile in silence, then 
she said. 

“If the crops are good maybe I can send you 
off to school with the money.” 

“But I don’t want any of the pension spent 
on me,” sobbed Kitty. 

“Your pa said you was to go to school and 
I thought you was so dreadful anxious to mind 
him!” retorted Mrs. Cresap. 

“He meant to send me with the treasure 
money,” returned Kitty. 

“Humph! If you wait for that you’ll never 
get an education!” 

But Kitty was neither to be scolded or coaxed 
into falling in with her mother’s action. She cried 
herself to sleep that night. 

Captain Cresap’s discharge from the army, the 
marriage certificate, his physician’s affidavits, and 
all other necessary papers, were easily accessible 
and easily proven ; and the pension application went 
through the needful forms with much greater dis- 
patch than was, or is, usual in such cases. By the 
middle of the next winter Mrs. Cresap was in re- 
ceipt of the pension. 

It was remarked with some wonder that she 
always went to Monkton to draw it, but she ex- 
plained this by saying that she had other business 
there and might as well get all done at once; and^ 
after a time her trips passed unnoticed. 


The Coming of Elder CareW* 



CHAPTER VII. 


“Kitty! Kitty,” called Mrs. Cresap from her 
bed' room, one day in the next spring, “Uncle Eph 
is bringing a strange man up to the house, and I 
am just combing my hair. You go to the door, 
while I put it up.” 

Kitty left a carpet loom at which she was 
working and looked out through the evening dusk. 
Uncle Eph was leading a horse laden with large 
saddle bags up to the front gate. A trifle in ad- 
vance of him walked a tall man of middle age, 
dressed in black. 

Uncle Eph held the gate, which had replaced 
the old time bars, open for the stranger to pass 
through, and then remained outside to hold the 
horse. 

The white man walked up the path and knocked 
at the open door. Kitty came forward. 

“Good evening, miss,” the stranger said. “My 
name is Carew, Elder Carew of the Methodist 
church. I find the town of Byson included in my 
new circuit, but I cannot reach there tonight. Your 
colored man thought you might find room for me 
over night. I should be glad if you could.” 

“I do not know. I will ask mamma,” replied 
Kitty, but at that moment Mrs. Cresap entered the 
room. 


71 


72 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


Elder Carew repeated his explanation and re^ 
quest to her. 

“Why, yes, you are welcome to stay if you can 
put up with our way of living,” answered Mrs, 
Cresap. 

“Indeed, I should be glad of any shelter,” an- 
swered the Elder, “and your house is quite palatial 
in comparison with many in these parts.” 

“Yes, it is right comfortable here,” responded 
his hostess, setting forth a chair for the guest, 
“Kitty, run out and tell Uncle Eph to put up the 
gentleman’s horse, and then go tell Aunt Peggy 
we will have company to supper.” 

After the meal was over mother and daughter 
found the elder’s company a cheering change from 
their usual manner of spending the evening. There 
had never been any bond of real sympathy between 
Kitty and her mother, and since the pension matter 
a still greater restraint had fallen between them. 
In the long winter evenings Mrs. Cresap usually 
knitted, and Kitty read, with Tige, who was al- 
lowed to sleep in the house for the feeling of pro- 
tection he gave, lying on the floor by her side. In 
the summer they generally sat in the dooryard till 
bedtime. 

“You seem to be a very busy woman, Mrs. Cre- 
sap,” said the elder, glancing at the carpet loom. 

“Oh, that is Kitty’s mostly,” answered her 
mother. “She likes to earn money for herself, and 
she coaxed me into getting that carpet loorn nearly 


THE COMING OF ELDER CAREW ' 73 


a year ago. Then nothing would do her but she 
must pay for it. She makes considerable money 
weaving carpets for the neighbors, or rather for 
the Byson folks.” 

‘'Very commendable, very commendable in- 
deed,” said the elder. “She seems young to possess 
so much prudence and thrift.” 

Elder Carew was a good man, but not a very 
discerning one, and he did not notice the flush and 
succeeding pallor on Kitty’s face. 

The truth was that Kitty was trying to do 
enough weaving to repay, so far as possible, any 
expense she might be to her mother, so as to avoid 
accepting any portion of the hated pension money, 
and thus for her part keep the letter and spirit of 
her father’s last directions. 

As the evening passed on Mrs. Cresap lighted 
up curiously. Her cheeks took on a rosy tinge, her 
eyes brightened, and her laugh rang out clear and 
sweet. 

By Kitty, as by most very young people, any- 
one over twenty-five was unconsciously classed as 
old, and she had never before noticed that her 
mother was really quite pretty. It struck her now 
as something new and not quite pleasant, and she 
stooped and patted Tige’s head with an added feel- 
ing of desolation and impending change. 

But when, before retiring, the elder requested 
the privilege of conducting a short prayer service, 
Kitty felt reassured. Her father had always read a 


74 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


chapter from the Bible, and the family Evening 
Prayer, each night ; and Kitty had sadly missed the 
custom on its cessation. The colored people were 
called in, and the elder read a chapter, and then of- 
fered up a prayer, which though somewhat more 
discursive than the one to which Kitty had been 
accustomed, was nevertheless earnest and reverent. 

On his departure in the morning Elder Carew 
shook hands with Kitty, and then with her mother, 
and the girl again felt a vague uneasiness as the 
elder retained the widow’s hand slightly beyond the 
usual length of a handshake, and requested permis- 
sion to call again on his next visit to the neighbor- 
hood, which favor was readily granted. 


The Camel Gets Wholly Inside the Tent. 



CHAPTER VIIL 


Elder Carew availed himself of the permission 
to visit at the Cresap farm quite frequently through 
the summer. Indeed Byson certainly received more 
than its rightful share of his ministrations. 

So it came tO' pass that one evening of the sea- 
son when the forest trees were putting on their 
dresses of crimson and gold, he made his appearance 
at the Cresap home in an unusually smart buggy, 
and stayed over night. The next morning the widow 
announced to her household that she was going on 
a visit to Osceola and would not be back the next 
day. Indeed, the widow did not come back at all. 
It was Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Carew who returned on 
the evening of the next day but one. 

Kitty was stunned. Then succeeded a wild 
burst of grief and resentment at the filling of her 
father’s place, which reddened her eyes and paled 
her face for days. After that mood had somewhat 
exhausted itself, one consideration began to whis- 
per comfort to her. The marriage would at least 
stop the payment of the pension. 

His new ties did not change Elder Carew’s 
way of living. After a few weeks’ honeymoon he 
took up his travels again, and only came home for 
a few days’ stay at intervals of a month or six 
weeks. 


77 


78 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


Though he did not seem to add much tO' the 
family income, he was kind to Kitty, and on each 
trip brought her books and papers, which, though 
not exactly to her taste, were eagerly perused for 
their novelty. 

One morning about two months after the mar- 
riage, and during one of her stepfather’s absences, 
Kitty was awakened by the rattle of a wagon driving 
away from the gate. Looking out, she saw it dis- 
appear around the curve of the timber. She had 
time, however, to recognize her mother seated in it, 
alone. 

Hastily dressing, she ran to the kitchen. 

“Aunt Peggy, where is mamma going so early, 
and all alone?” she demanded. 

“Laws, honey, yo’s ma’s done gone ter Monk- 
ton,” answered Aunt Peggy. “Didn’t she tell 
you’uns nuffin’ erbout it?” 

“No,” said Kitty, “she didn’t tell me a word 
about it. But,” she added recovering her self-pos- 
session and with it her loyalty, “I dare say she had 
some good reason for not taking me with her or 
telling me about it. Maybe she intends to surprise 
me.” 

“Dat’s a fac’,” consoled Aunt Peggy. “I ’low 
she gwine ter brung you’uns a new dress.” 

Mrs. Carew certainly did have a good reason 
for not taking her daughter to town with her, for 
this is what she did there. 

She had taken with her the pension voucher 


CAMEL GETS WHOLLY INSIDE THE TENT 79 


that had come with her last check, about a month 
before her marriage. This she executed before her 
notary as usual, though she did falter a little as 
she signed it Susan Cresap, and mailed it to the 
place from which the pension checks were issued 
for that part of the country. 

It had not been a sudden thing. She had rea- 
soned the matter according to her lights. The moral 
side troubled her but little ; not so much as her first 
serious lapse, the breaking of her promise to her 
dying husband. As to the danger of exposure, 
there was, as has been stated, but little communica- 
tion between her neighborhood and the county seat. 
Since Captain Cresap’s death the people on the 
nearest farm had happened to have moved away, 
and she had no acquaintance with any new comers, 
many of whom did not even know of her second 
marriage. Elder Carew^s circuit went no nearer 
to Monkton than his wife's farm. She concluded 
there was but little risk of detection. Indeed, though 
she knew she should have notified the department 
on her second marriage, she did not fully compre- 
hend the gravity of her crime, nor the extent of the 
penalty. Still, she realized that it was a dishonesty ; 
and she hastened to make a few purchases, including 
a new dress for Kitty, and get out of town. She 
felt relieved with every mile she put between her- 
self and Monkton, and breathed still more freely 
when safe at home. 

Kitty felt a girlish pleasure in the new dress, 


80 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


which she supposed free from the taint of the pen- 
sion money, and forbore to question her mother as 
to her trip. Indeed, she concluded that her mother’s 
business in Monkton had been to stop the pension, 
and ascribed her reticence regarding the trip to the 
difference of opinion they held about the whole 
matter. 

But when, in about a' week, Mrs. Carew an- 
nounced her intention of going to Monkton again 
next day, Kitty exclaimed: 

^‘Why, mamma, what in the world are you go- 
ing there again for, so soon? It is just like the 
way you did when you drew your pension !” 

Mrs. Carew flushed and then paled. 

“See here, Kitty Cresap,” she said pettishly. 
“You just mind your own business, will you? I 
reckon I am old enough to ’tend to mine. I forgot 
to get some things I want, if you must know !” 

But she avoided her daughter’s eyes, which 
filled with tears at the sharpness of the rebuke, cou- 
pled with a vague fear, and she presently made an 
excuse to leave the room. 

The next morning she again went alone to 
Monkton. A letter awaited her at the postoffice, as 
she had calculated. It contained a check, and the 
next quarter’s voucher. She cashed the check at 
the local bank, bought a few articles, including 
presents for the Christmas drawing near, and hastily 
left town, a furtive look beginning to appear on her 
face. 


CAMEL GETS WHOLLY INSIDE THE TENT 81 


On entering her home, she went straight to 
her room; and Kitty thoughtlessly entering the 
room with a message from Aunt Peggy, surprised 
her in the act of putting a paper, looking strangely 
like a pension voucher, into a box containing her 
deeds and other legal documents, and the uneasiness 
the girl had felt all day deepened into positive 
anxiety. If her mother was still drawing the pen- 
sion, what terrible thing would the government do 
to her if she were found out in the fraud? 



Baby Eloise. 













CHAPTER IX. 


During the slow passing of that winter Kath- 
erine and her mother grew steadily apart. 

As all roads lead to Rome, so all conversations 
between them seemed to lead to the pension topic, 
and then stop, for that subject was tabooed by both. 
In the absence of Elder Carew they scarcely spoke 
except when necessary. 

Kitty had taken up her carpet weaving with 
renewed energy, and really earned enough for 
nearly all her simple wants. Her patrons were 
mostly from Byson. They would drive out with 
their carpet rags, and she would return the finished 
carpet. 

Mrs. Carew had become possessed of some 
novels of a rather inferior type. When her husband, 
who regarded all fiction as byways to destruction, 
was absent, she spent most of her time reading them. 
When he was at home, she knitted. 

As the quarter’s end drew near, Kitty grew 
alert with anxiety to know if her mother would 
make another trip to Monkton. 

It happened that the elder was at home when 
the time came, but his stay was short, and the very 
day after he left Mrs. Carew drove alone to Monk- 
ton. 


85 


86 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


It was a warm day for midwinter, and Kitty 
wondered why her mother wrapped up as though for 
an Arctic expedition, but so complete had become 
the restraint between them that she made no 
remark. 

After the usual lapse of time the trip was re- 
peated. Mrs. Carew again putting on extra cloth- 
ing till she looked very much larger than her real 
size. 

Then Kitty became sure that her mother was 
still drawing the pension. What could she do? 
There was no one competent to give advice. Be- 
side, to tell anyone would only hasten the trouble 
she desired to avert. She would not wreck her 
mother’s domestic happiness by informing her step- 
father. She was obliged to keep tRe secret, and the 
estrangement grew. 

Mrs. Carew knew that Kitty suspected her, and 
disapproved of her course, and the knowledge of 
this, and the fear that Kitty might in some way 
betray her crime, rankled in her mind, till she grew 
to nearly hate her daughter. 

When the next quarter rolled round it was 
quite warm weather, but still Mrs. Carew made up 
her appearance. Over all she wore a long linen 
ulster, the material for which she had boug-ht on 
her last trip to Monkton. 

One morning in mid-summer, Kitty was awak- 
ened by a strange cry. It came from her mother’s 
room, and sounded like nothing she had ever heard 


BABY ELOISE 


87 


unless it was the bleat of a young lamb she had 
once had for a pet. 

She dressed hurriedly and went out into the 
sitting room. The door of her mother’s room was 
closed, but presently it opened, and Aunt Peggy ap- 
peared carrying in her arms a white bundle, from 
which issued that strange cry. ' Kitty grew wide- 
eyed with excitement as Aunt Peggy came toward 
her. 

“What is that?” she gasped. 

“W’y, laws, honey,” laughed Aunt Peggy, “it’s 
yo’s own little sister. Now you’uns will have 
sumfin’ fer company, yo’ po’ lam’ !” And she care- 
fully laid the bundle in Kitty’s arms. 

They closed over it in a wonderfully natural 
fashion, and as the baby opened its violet eyes and 
looked up in her face with a contraction of its own 
that seemed like a smile, the unused tendrils of 
Kitty’s love clasped round its little form, and grew 
too tightly ever to be unwound without breaking. 



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Mrs. Duane De Witt and Her Discovery. 




CHAPTER X. 


Through the long double parlors of a hand- 
some house in a then fashionable part of Boston a 
woman paced restlessly. Sometimes she paused as 
the tread of some passerby seemed to stop at her 
door, and listened intently. When the doorbell 
really rang she started visibly. 

“A colored man wishes to see you ma’am,” an- 
nounced the maid. She was evidently surprised 
that he had not come to the back door. 

“Show him in,” answered her mistress, “and 
Mary, I am not at home to anyone, positively to no 
one, this afternoon.” 

“Very well, ma’am,” the maid said, too well 
trained to show, even in her manner, her opinion 
of the reception of such a caller in the parlor; and 
forthwith ushered in an old negro. 

The lady came forward. 

“I am glad you have kept your appointment, 
uncle,” she said. “You shall not lose by it. There 
is a chair.” She motioned toward one, and herself 
sank into another. 

“My name is De Witt — Mrs. Duane De Witt,” 
she continued. “The reason I wish to see you is 
this : As I passed you on the street this morning 
I heard you speak to your friend about a family 

91 


92 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


named Cresap, who live in Missouri. If they are 
the family I think they are I have a reason for wish- 
ing to hear something about them.” 

“Yashn,” answered the old negro, “hit wuz dis 
heah way. I done went out dar las’ yeah to see my 
br’er Eph, w’at I hadn’t seen sence befo’ de wah. 
Him and his wife lib in Mizzoury.” 

“Yes, I thought I heard you say they lived on 
a farm with the Cresap family.” 

“Yas’m, dat’s de truf. Lemme see, Cap’n 
Ralph Cresap wuz de name.” 

The lady started. 

“He is alive?” she asked quickly and anx- 
iously. 

“No’m, he ain’t. He up’n died jus’ erbout de 
time I got out dar. En Eph he’d b’en wukkin’ fer 
er doctah w’at ’tended on de cap’n, en dis yer 
doctah let de widdow hi’e Eph en his wife ter wuk 
fer her, ’case de doctah he moved ter town, en didn’t 
need Eph’s wife no mo’, ’case dere wuz no milk en 
truck fer her ter keer fer, so I up’n wukked fer de 
doctah a spell. Fo’ long Eph tol’ me de widdow 
she up’n mahry one of dese yer trabblin’ Methody 
preachers.” 

The lady turned pale at the first part of this 
speech, and her eyes flashed at the last. 

“Had Captain Cresap any children ?” she asked 
in an unsteady voice. 

“Yas’m, jes one gal erbout fifteen yeahs ol’, I 
reckon. I seed her in town, onct. Moust’us putty 


MRS. DUANE De WITT AND HER DISCOVERY 93 


gal. No po’ w’ite trash erbout her. But she didn’t 
look peart. Kinder down like, sholy.” 

“What kind of looking woman was his wife?” 
asked Mrs. De Witt. 

“Use on’y seen her onct, but it ’peared she had 
be’n raised kinder po’ folksy. Mebbe dat ain’t 
’zactly ’spectful, but yo’ is a southe’n lady yo’se’f. 
or Pete kin see dat, en yo’ know er darkey w’at 
be’n raised wif de fust famblys knows quality folks 
we’n he sees ’em.” 

Mrs. De Witt had started when old Pete told 
her she was a southern lady, but answered quietly. 

“Yes, indeed. Uncle Pete. Your people are 
often better judges of those things than many white 
people. Now tell me just where this family is to 
be found.” 

“Yb’ all not gwine ter do no hu’t ter Eph, er 
me, er any ob ’em?” queried the negro earnestly. 

“No indeed. I am going to see if I cannot do 
something for the young lady, in return for a kind- 
ness her father’s people once did for me,” answered 
Mrs. De Witt. 

Mrs. De Witt had no really intimate friends, 
but her acquaintances often remarked that there 
was a history locked behind her cold, proud face. 
One of the expressions that gave rise to the remark 
now crossed the lady’s handsome featured, but 
peculiarly expressioned, face — a mixture of bitter- 
ness, and defiance, and fear. If the old man had 
caught the look he might have hesitated about giv- 


94 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


iiig the desired information, but just then he was 
stooping to pick up his hat, which had dropped 
from his fingers as he twirled it. When he looked 
up the lady’s face was calm as a burned out crater, 
and gave something of the same impreWion. There- 
fore he gave the location of the Cresap farm ac- 
curately. 

“Very well, that is all,” said the lady, rising 
with an air of dismissal. “Here is a trifle to pay 
you for your time and trouble.” And she held out 
a five dollar note. 

“Laws, misses, ol’ Pete’s time ain’t wu’f dat 
much, en it ain’t no trubble a-tall,” he said. 

But he was finally persuaded to take the money, 
and left the room with many low bows. 

Then Mrs. De Witt gave way to a wild burst 
of grief. She threw herself face downward on a 
couch, but instead of sobs her unhappiness expressed 
itself in moans, and writhings of her lithe figure. 

“O Ralph! Ralph!” she murmured, “my dear 
little worshiping brother, the only one of them all 
that loved your wayward sister. You, too, have 
gone into the great Beyond before me, who am so 
deathly sick of life. But I have something to live 
for now. I will find your daughter, Ralph, and she 
shall be brought up as becomes a Cresap. I will 
educate her. She shall have the benefit of every 
accomplishment, and of travel. I will make her my 
heiress.- I wonder if he ever told his wife and 
daughter about me. No, it is not likely” — and 


MRS. DUANE De WITT AND HER DISCOVERY 95 


again that curious spasm crossed her face. “It is 
not a story the proud Cresaps care to repeat. Still 
he may have mentioned me and gave them a horror 
of me that will frustrate my plans. I will tell them 
I am Anne. She was the flower of our flock and he 
will have spoken well of her. They cannot know 
that she is dead, for he did not. I will tell them 
it was I, Eleanor, that died. If the mother had 
married again, she will be the more willing to let 
the child go with me. I will start immediately.” 

With the impulsiveness that had always marked 
Eleanor Cresap, she rose from the couch, and rang 
for her maid and her coachman. The one she sent 
to her chamber to pack for her journey, and the 
other she sent to the railroad station to inquire about 
trains. Before midnight she was speeding west- 
ward on a fast express. 








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^‘Where the Brook and River Meet.” 



CHAPTER XL 


At fifteen Katherine Cresap’s character was 
more fully formed than is usual at that age. Many 
things had tended toward this result. 

Living all her life with grown people was 
doubtless one of these factors. Another was her 
deep grief over her father’s death. But probably 
the most powerful of all was the distress and worry 
of the pension matter, which weighed on her spirits 
day and night with the insistence that living troubles 
have, and for the time transformed what would 
naturally have been a cheerful, though somewhat 
dreamy temperament, into a serious and somewhat 
embittered one. 

There was little outward excitement or change 
to take her mind off from the topic. As has been 
said, many of the early settlers had moved away, 
and their places had been taken by others. These 
newcomers were mostly intelligent, well-to-do peo- 
ple, who kept their farms in neat repair, and main- 
tained some social lines. 

On the contrary a blight seemed to have fallen 
on the Cresap farm. That tumble-down appear- 
ance which will come to any home unless deter- 
minedly kept up, was creeping over it. 

Its mistress was changing, too. From a social, 


99 


100 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


kindly, though somewhat coarse and ignorant 
woman, Mrs. Carew was becoming morose, grasp- 
ing, and taciturn; repelling what few advances her 
neighbors made, till they ceased making any over- 
tures, and left her to her own devices. Mrs. Cap- 
tain Cresap had stood on the top round of such 
social ladder as the neighborhood boasted; Mrs. 
Elder Carew was rapidly nearing the foot of that 
structure. Consequently Kitty was more completely 
alone than ever. 

To her little sister she had become tenderly at- 
tached, and their mother had given over much of 
the care of the infant to her. They had named the 
child Eloise at the request of her father, who had 
a romantic streak hidden away somewhere under 
his clerical cloth, and who had himself baptized her. 
Little Eloise grew in beauty every day, though 
manifesting already a tendency to willfulness, which 
her mother had refused to check, saying, ‘'Oh, there 
will be plenty of time to break her in by and by.” 
Perhaps her devoted tendance of the baby added to 
Kitty’s prococious stability. 

She still owned Firefly and Tige, though her 
mother had once attempted to sell the former, but 
had been met with such a flash in her daughter’s 
eyes, usually so gentle, that she desisted. The girl’s 
chief recreation was mounting the pony and racing 
over the prairie and through the woods with Tige 
following after. 


WHERE THE BROOK AND RIVER MEET 101 


She knew the flora and fauna of the country 
thoroughly. The time of bloom of every species of 
plant in the neighborhood was stored in her memory, 
and she greeted their returning blossoms as the 
coming of old friends. But she had a peculiarity 
regarding them. She would not pluck them. She 
had a fancy that they liked to live out their brief 
lives in their own homes. 

She also knew the different birds, and their 
habits, though she did not know all their names, 
because there was no one of whom she could learn 
them. 

There were no schools in session near enough 
for her to attend, and reading had to furnish her 
education. Even church services were denied her, 
Mrs. Carew having refused, greatly to the good 
elder’s bewilderment, to attend her husband’s meet- 
ings in Byson, or to allow Kitty to do so. The 
truth was Mrs. Carew feared that some one might 
happen down from Monkton, to whom she might 
be pointed out as the elder’s wife, and so reveal 
her secret. 

Some souls so left alone with God and nature 
would have ignored the former and lived only by 
the laws of the latter; but Katherine had early im- 
bibed a reverence for God the Father and a love of 
God the Son, from her own father, who had kept 
his faith in the justice of the one, and the mercy 
of the other, through a fierce warping that had come 


102 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


to him in early youth and wrecked his ambitions 
and career, yet could not destroy his faith. 

And then Katherine was by nature one of those 
gifted souls who would have grown up tall, and 
white, and pure, out of any environment, however 
bad; as a pond lily keeps its whiteness locked in its 
bosom till it can lift its head above the black waters 
of the pool and expand it in the sunlight. 

It might be questioned how much credit is due 
that type — the straight, unwarped natures to whom 
sin, at least in its more petty and ignoble forms, is 
so repulsive that it holds for them no temptation. 
But, however that may be, it is certain that we love 
the oak and the wild rose more than the upas tree 
and the poison ivy. 

Elder Carew had at one time brought home 
some odd numbers of “The Ladies’ Repository,” a 
Methodist publication at that time much and de- 
servedly in vogue. In one of these Kitty had found 
a poem which exercised a great influence over her. 
She read and reread it till one day while resting her 
pony in the shade of the old sycamore opposite the 
cave, she found, to her surprise, that she could re- 
cite it. 

The lines ran : — 

“She was a woman, God made her so. 

Gave her a woman’s strength — and weakness. 

She was a wife; and her lifted brow 

Wore the crown with a grave sweet meekness. 


WHERE THE BROOK AND RIVER MEET 103 


She was a mother — you have seen trees 
Blush and bloom in summer sweetness; 

But when autumn tracked brown the leas, 

Reach low their arms full of rare completeness! 

She was not beautiful, as men say it. 

And yet the angels would call her so. 

She claimed not won homage, as men pay it — 
Pray God keep all our lives green and low! 

But oh, when she stood in the pale gray gloaming. 
Just on evening’s hither edge, 

Listening the step that was late in coming. 

Leaning out under night’s slatey ledge; 

Her eyes, grown wide with gazing on heaven. 

And broad green reaches of field and wood. 
Luminous with the light that is only given 
By love’s fruition; as thus she stood, 

I used to dream that a saint might lean so 
From her safe pure Heaven, to welcome to rest 
The love of her earth-life. For this woman, seen so. 
Had caught the look that is worn by the blest ! 

A woman’s life is a wonderful thing! a 
yearning. 

Hungering, questioning, outreaching toward the 
Infinite I 

W earing her womanhood like a ci own ; yet holding 
Her pilgrim stall of duty. O proud man 
When in your clasp that soft hand folding. 

Have you not cursed the staff that vexed your palm? 


104 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


So of this woman of whom I write. Her home 
Was her temple — Each homely duty 
A sacred, and holy, and reverent rite. 

All glorified by love’s tender beauty. 

My pilgrim staff had seemed hard and brown. 

Hers budded greenly. And under and over 
Her hands, the starry blossoms trailed down. 
Rose-geranium, mignonette, wheat, and clover. 
And all her life had the rare fine smell 
That lingers above the incense smoke. And on her 
forehead 

There seemed to dwell the grave high calmness 
Of those who look, with eyes washed clear of earthly 
mist, 

And gaze, Christ shriven, through blue and scarlet 
and amethyst 

Straight to the altar-place of Heaven! 

And life meant much to her. Meant home, and 
love, 

And children’s prattle; and a faithful heart’s de- 
votion. 

Yet meant more. Meant a height as far above these 
joys 

As mountain peak above the plain’s green ocean. 

A height so far and still, so awfully sublime. 

That walking there touching God’s altar horn. 

She smiled down on this pitiful reach of time, — 
Measured it with that smile from bourne to bourne. 
And knew how all its uttermost sweeps of woe ; 

Its terriblest abysm of black despair; 


WHERE THE BROOK AND RIVER MEET 105 


Its pleasures, which like poppies of eternal sleep 
Are scattered o’er lives that stifle for purer air ; 

Its hopes, and joys, and triumphs, paled and fell 
Like cold white ashes on an altar-place : 

While she stood, calm with reverence, within the 
veil. 

And gazed on the clear light that hid Jehovah’s face. 

And when my soul could comprehend it, 

My dull dumb despair seemed like some loud out- 
spoken blasphemy. 

That hurt with its fierce breath the quivering air. 
And made the scared stars shiver in the sky. 

Till, not to hear it, I caught up my broken life. 

And went and laid it down before God’s furnace 
fire. 

And cried out o’er it, ‘Lord, here ends all my strife, 
Heat Thou Thy burning crucible seven times higher, 
I shall not murmur. Only fit me so 
For the embodying of Thy grand ideal. 

That I may work out in Thy furnace glow of 
anguish. 

Or on bare heights, or where still waters flow, — 
Thou knowest when and where, it were not well 
for me to know, — 

A life as pure, and grand, and holy 
As this real !’ ” 

A strange poem to captivate the fancy of so 
young a girl ! Another odd thing was that instead 


106 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


of learning from it its lesson of peace and content- 
ment with one’s lot, it gave her a great and restless 
longing to grow — toward goodness and greatness 
— ^but still to grow. She had never forgotten her 
childish ambition to write, and now many cherished 
scraps of paper received the confidences she could 
express in no other way or through no other out- 
let. The ambitions and aspirations of talented 
youth began to take hold upon her, and to prepare 
her to welcome the great change of environment 
that was mercifully coming nearer and nearer every 
day. 


Mrs. De Witt Appears at the Cresap Farm. 


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CHAPTER XIL 


Mrs. Duane De Witt arrived at the railroad 
station nearest to Byson without accident. Here she 
hired a carriage and driver for the continuance of 
her journey, leaving her luggage and even her maid 
at the village hotel. She had stopped over night 
in Byson, and taken an early start, consequently it 
was before noon of a purple autumn day when she 
arrived at the Cresap place. Somehow most of the 
joys and griefs of her life seemed to come to Kitty 
with the falling of the leaves. 

When the carriage stopped at her gate Mrs. 
Carew’s guilty conscience drove the blood from her 
florid face. She dreaded to see a United States 
detective emerge from it, and was greatly relieved 
when a richly dressed lady was assisted to alight by 
the driver, who further opened the gate for her with 
great deference, and then stood by the horses’ heads 
while she walked up the path to the house. 

Mrs. De Witt’s brow contracted as she took 
in the surroundings. 

“Looks like the last end of hard times!” she 
thought in old Virginia phrase, “But then the child 
will be all the more willing to leave it.” 

Her knock was answered almost immediately 
by Mrs. Carew, she having been awaiting it. 

109 


110 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“Good morning,” the strange lady said. “Am 
I rightfully informed that this is the home of the 
former Mrs. Ralph Cresap?” 

Mrs. Carew started as the soft, languid. South- 
ern accent, so like her former husband’s, fell on her 
ear. 

“Yes^ ma’am,” she answered, “that was my 
first husband’s name. Will you come in?” And 
she threw the door wide open. 

Mrs. De Witt stepped inside. 

“Then you are my sister,” she said, extending 
a jeweled hand. “I am Anne Cresap, now Mrs. 
De Witt. You have heard poor Ralph speak of 
me?” 

Mrs. Carew looked closely at her while shak- 
ing hands. She had a keen memory for faces. 
Where had she seen her before? Suddenly she 
knew. It was the face that had looked up at her 
from the daguerreotype whose burning she had so 
often sincerely regretted. But she was now so prac- 
ticed in deceit that dissimulation had become a sec- 
ond nature. It immediately passed through her 
mind that this lady was rich, and had come to do 
something for them; perhaps to send Kitty to school. 
That would rid her of her daughter’s wistful eyes 
and at the same time be much better for the girl. 
What difference which sister it was, so long as she 
aided them? It was all nonsense about Kitty’s vow, 
of which she knew. Beside, Kitty herself would 
not be breaking the spirit of it if she thought this 


MRS. De WITT AT THE CRES AP FARM 1 1 1 


her aunt Anne. She would further the deception. 

“Well,” she said, “Captain Cresap never talked 
much about his family, but I remember his mention- 
ing you. I believe he said that Anne was the really 
best of all his sisters.” And she placed a chair for 
Mrs. De Witt. 

“That was like Ralph,” that lady said. “He 
was always close mouthed, even as a child. Did he 
never tell you of Eleanor?” She risked the ques- 
tion breathlessly. 

“Not a great deal,” answered Mrs. Carew. 
“But I gather from something he let drop that she 
had been his favorite sister, but that she had done 
something awful, and he was angry with her, and 
yet mad at the rest of the family for the way they 
treated her about it.” 

Mrs. De Witt had grown very pale. 

“He did not tell you the circumstances?” She 
hung on the answer. 

“No’m. He was afraid he might when he was 
out of his head in his last sickness, but he never 
did,” answered Susan. 

Mrs. De Witt looked greatly relieved. 

“It is just as well,” she said. “No use in 
raking up old family troubles, and poor Eleanor has 
been dead for years. Ralph left a daughter, did he 
not?” she added. 

“Yes'm. Katherine is nearly sixteen now. 
This one,” pointing to Eloise cooing on the floor, 
“is my second husband’s, Mr. Carew’s, child.” 


112 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“Yes, a pretty baby.” Mrs. De Witt’s tone 
was careless. Eloise was not a Cresap. “Where 
is Katherine? May I see her, please?” 

“She went out riding on her pony, but she will 
be back soon, I reckon. You will stay to dinner, 
of course. Let me take your things.” 

“Yes,” Mrs. De Witt laughed, her spirits ris- 
ing. “After coming all the way from Boston I will 
stay over night if it will not inconvenience you.” 

“Oh, we can make out, if you can; and I 
reckon we can put up your driver, too.” 

“No, thank you. I think I will send him back 
to town, with instructions to come out tomorrow for 
me. My maid is at a little hotel back at the rail- 
road terminus and I must send her word that T 
reached you safely. I brought her with me from 
France and she never saw just such a country, and 
is firmly convinced we shall both be murdered, at 
least.” 

“You have been in France?” Mrs. Carew’s 
tone was quite awed. 

“Yes, I lived there almost all my married life. 
Mr. De Witt was a Frenchman, and made all his 
money, quite a fortune, in France. He is buried 
in one of the beautiful new cemeteries just outside 
the city,” she added with a sigh that seemed genuine. 

Presently she roused herself to dispatch the 
waiting driver with a note to her maid. She gave 
the necessary directions with an easy air of com- 


MRS. De WITT AT THE CRESAP FARM 1 13 


mand, as if too accustomed to obedience to feel the 
need of putting much force into her requests. 

‘T have come all the way from Boston to ask 
a favor of you, Mrs. Carew,” she then said. “And 
yet it is really to do you a favor, too, if you will allow 
me to say so. It seems impossible that Katherine 
can obtain a proper education here. Will you not 
lend her to me? I can, and will, give her every 
advantage.” 

Although Mrs. Carew had felt she would like 
to be free from the reproach of Kitty’s high stand- 
ards, natural maternal feeling was strong enough 
within her to moisten her eyes at the thought of 
really giving up her daughter. 

“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “It would 
be good for Kitty, I reckon. Her pa always meant 
to send her off to school, I know. But of course it 
would be hard to part with her for good and all. 
Have you any children of your own?” 

Mrs. De Witt’s face twitched, but she answered 
readily. 

“No, I have never been blest with a child, and 
although my husband left a large fortune, he has 
no near relatives living. Therefore, I feel at liberty 
to do as I choose with the property, and your Kath- 
erine is as near a relative as I have left. In point 
of fact she is the only one I feel disposed to aid. 
Ralph was my favorite of all the family, and his 
daughter shall be my heiress if you will let me take 
lier and educate her to befit the position.” 


114 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“I suppose I had ought to let her go. She sure 
hasn’t much chance here. Yes, she can go with you 
if she wants to. There is one reason she might not 
want to go,” Mrs. Carew went on hesitatingly. 
“Kitty is a mighty queer child, and if she takes it 
into her head that it ain’t right to go with you, she 
won’t budge an inch.” 

“Why, what can there possibly be wrong about 
it?” queried Mrs. De Witt. 

“Well, you see, as I said, Ralph seemed to hold 
something terrible hard against his sister Eleanor, 
and he got Kitty to promise, on his death-bed, that 
she would never let Eleanor help her in any way,” 
explained Mrs. Carew. 

Mrs. De Witt turned very pale, and it was a 
little space before she could answer. 

“I did not think Ralph could be so vindictive. 
He was such a loving little fellow,” she murmured. 
“Poor Nell was punished enough at the time.” 

Mrs. Carew remembered to whom she was 
speaking, and relented. 

“Just before he died he did tell me that he sup- 
posed he must forgive her,” she said, more gently 
than was her wont. “It was nearly the last thing he 
said.” 

The tears came into Mrs. De Witt’s eyes. 

“I am glad of that,” she said, “for his sake, too. 
We all need forgiveness ourselves. But all this does 
not make it wrong for Katherine to take help from 


MRS. De WITT AT THE CRESAP FARM 1 15 


me. It was Eleanor’s money, not mine, that she 
promised not to touch.” 

“That’s so,” assented Mrs. Carew. She de- 
tected the subterfuge, but again mentally went over 
her argument that it did not matter which sister 
it was. Then a shadow fell from the door, and she 
added : 

“But here is Kitty to speak for herself.” 

In truth, Katherine, tall and slight, with her 
sunbonnet falling back from her beautiful face, stood 
in the doorway. Her aunt’s face brightened as she 
looked at her, and then both women rose and went 
to meet the girl as she entered the room. 

“Kitty,” said her mother, “this is your Aunt 
Anne, your father’s sister.” 

Mrs. De Witt took the girl in her arms with 
evident emotion. She had thought to kiss her mouth. 
Some indefinable impulse directed the kiss to her 
forehead. 

There was a puzzled look in Kitty’s honest hazel 
eyes as she returned the embrace. The mixed feel- 
ing toward her aunt that then took possession of 
her never left her, though the relative amount of the 
ingredients often varied. It was a strange mingling 
of fascination and repulsion, and was often felt by 
sensitive persons toward Mrs. De Witt. 

No human being could pass through such an 
awful stress of shame, and sorrow, and physical dis- 
comfort as she had, and not ever after bear its marks, 


116 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


to be vaguely recognized by all fine fibred souls on 
close contact. 

She held her niece from her, and looked into 
her face. It was like looking into the mirror some 
two decades ago. Only in place of pride and will- 
fulness and latent deceit, there was here perfect and 
open honesty combined with a high, yet gentle, 
spirit. 

“My dear child,” she said, “I want you to come 
and live in Boston with me. Your mother and I 
have been talking it over. You will have a beautiful 
home, and pretty clothes, and can go to a fashionable 
school.” 

“Pa always wanted me to do that,” said Kitty 
when she had caught her breath. “But” — her glance 
swept around the room and lingered on Baby Eloise, 
who was creeping toward her with gurgles of de- 
light. 

“Of course the parting will be a little hard at 
first,” said her aunt, “but all good things have their 
price in this world. When you have finished school 
we will travel. How would you like to go to Eng- 
land, and France, and Germany, and Italy? Then 
you can come home and enter society.” 

Kitty gasped. School and Europe! It was 
the realization of her fondest day dreams. And her 
mother would have her husband and Eloise, and 
she herself would get away from the pension. 

“I should dearly love the school, and I should 
like to travel. But after that I would rather work 


MRS. De WITT AT THE CRESAP FARM 117 


and repay you, Aunt Anne. Could I not teach?” 

Mrs. De Witt had all the old-time, high-bred 
Southern lady’s horror of a woman’s going out into 
the world to work for a living, but she reflected 
that this was only a mood, and came from the child’s 
having been reared so ‘‘poor folksy.” She would 
humor it now and Kitty would outgrow it. 

“Oh, yes, you can teach, if you like. But just 
to be happy will be the best payment you can make 
at present.” 

It is needless to follow the further discussion. 
Suffice it to say that when the carriage left the gate 
the next day Kitty was seated in it, sobbing, having 
broken down at parting with her baby sister. Tige 
was lying at her feet, and Firefly’s halter was fas- 
tened to one of the carriage horses, Kitty having 
stipulated for her pets. Mrs. Carew was looking 
through some natural tears at a large bank check in 
her hands, and little Eloise had crawled to the door- 
way, and was crying and stretching out her arms 
after the retreating carriage. 

Ah, the mercy of the veil that hides the future ! 
Well was it that Kitty could not see the meeting of 
the family in after years. 


In Boston Town. 


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CHAPTER XIII. 


If a Virginian were to disappear, about the last 
place in the world that his friends would search for 
him would probably be Boston. Possibly this was 
the reason Mrs. De Witt had elected to make thaf 
city her home. 

When Kitty awoke on her first morning in Bos- 
ton she lay and looked about the room which her 
aunt had told her should be hers, in delighted be- 
wilderment. The furnishings were a symphony in 
pink. It was before the day of the metal bedstead, 
and the one on which she lay was of white wood 
with wreaths of pink roses scattered over it. The 
sheets and pillow cases were of the finest hem- 
stitched linen. The quilt was silk and eider-down, 
and the spread lace. The walls and ceiling were 
hung with pale French gray paper, with a deep 
border and large centerpiece of delicately traced wild 
roses. On the toilet table were many articles at 
whose use she could only guess. When she rose 
her feet sank into the pink roses of the velvet car- 
pet. The thought of the lady of Burleigh ran in her 
mind : 

“With the burden of an honor 
Unto which she was not born.’’ 


121 


122 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


But as she dressed she felt the adaptability of 
the young American woman rising within her. Had 
the Lady Burleigh been an American there had 
not been such early mourning at Stamford town. 

“The first thing you need, ma chere, is some 
clothes,” said Mrs. De Witt at breakfast. With her 
arrival in Boston she resumed her French phrases, 
which for some reason she had discarded on her 
western trip. 

Accordingly soon after breakfast the carriage 
was ordered, and they departed on a shopping ex- 
pedition. They had stopped in St. Louis long 
enough to purchase a ready-made traveling suit for 
Kitty, and this she now wore. 

The great stores were a revelation to Kitty, 
and made her feel very inexperienced again. But 
she did a wise thing, though she was shyly appre^ 
hensive that her way of expressing it sounded a little 
priggish. 

“If you please. Aunt Anne,” she said, on being 
asked to choose among some articles at Jordan & 
Marsh’s, “I think you had best get whatever you 
think suitable till I learn more about it.” 

Mrs. De Witt abided by this advice, and 
shopped persistently till the carriage was overflow- 
ing with parcels. With these they drove to a fash- 
ionable dressmaker’s, where modes were discussed 
till Kitty’s head whirled. She was glad when the 
carriage was turned toward home, and she could go 
to her own room to collect herself. 


IN BOSTON TOWN 


123 


This was one of the things the prospect of which 
Kitty particularly enjoyed, the privilege of being 
alone a part of the day. It was one she had had 
only in summer time at home, being obliged to sit 
with the family in cold weather for warmth and 
light. 

The first few weeks were spent in shopping, 
tryings on at the dressmaker’s, sight seeing, and 
driving. The latter recreation was most pleasurably 
taken in the afternoon, as it was now getting into the 
cool of autumn. 

Accordingly their mornings were given to shop- 
ping and tryings on. Then they drove home for 
lunch. Mrs. De Witt then went to her own room 
to take a nap, and Kitty to hers to read. Her aunt’s 
library was not extensive, many works being in 
French, so Kitty got most of her books from the 
Public Library. Then the carriage came round and 
they went driving, or to see some object of interest 
on which they had decided at lunch. They arrived 
at home in time for the six o’clock dinner. The 
evening was often spent at a concert or at a theater. 
Mrs. De Witt did not care for lectures. 

Any healthy minded young girl, unless prevent- 
ed by severe homesickness, would have enjoyed the 
novelty and ease of this life, and Kitty’s naturally 
cheerful disposition rose to the surface. The remem- 
brance of Baby Eloise and the pension, were the 
only clouds on her horizon, if we may except a pe- 
culiar infirmity of temper occasionally displayed 


124 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


by Mrs. De Witt. However, her aunt seemed to be 
aware of the coming on of these moods, and would 
generally keep her room till they were passed over. 

One of the things Kitty liked was the trees. 
Somehow she had always fancied that a city was an 
endless row of houses unbroken by any green thing, 
and the noble elms and lindens and maples, that 
shaded the residence streets, were a glad surprise 
and a lasting delight to her. 

The horse-cars looked so very metropolitan, and 
she liked to watch the flaring gas lamps flame down 
the streets at night. In the seventies electricity had 
not been successfully broken to harness for common 
use. 

Occasionally, when her aunt did not care to 
drive, she was allowed to go out on her pony, a 
neat riding habit having been included in her new 
wardrobe. The fact that a groom followed her 
spoiled it a little; but he did follow, not lead, and 
she deserted the fashionable drives, Beacon Street, 
Commonwealth Avenue, Brighton Road, and others, 
for the quainter, quieter, more historic or picturesque 
parts of the city, and its outlying districts. 

Meanwhile Mrs. De Witt was casting about for 
just such a school as she desired for her niece. Al- 
though so bright, Kitty was naturally deficient in 
text book study, and could profitably have gone to 
the public schools for some years. But Mrs. De 
Witt would none of them. 


IN BOSTON TOWN 


125 


Her own residence was in the South End, she 
not having cared to join the exodus to the Back 
Bay, which set in about this time. She was not in 
society as it usually meant by that term. Conserv- 
ative Boston would not have accepted an accession 
of whose antecedents it knew nothing; that was 
something money could not buy. Nor did Mrs. De 
Witt care to spend for it. Having been born to a 
“first family” position in her native state, she would 
not strive for it among aliens. Her acquaintances 
were almost exclusively Americans who had lived 
in France, or French who now lived in America, and 
none of them were her near neighbors. 

She considered. Though indifferent for her- 
self she wished Kitty to ornament the best society 
when “finished.” She could think of only one way 
to forward, at present, her plans in that direction. 

That way was to find a boarding school patron- 
ized by some of the local old families, so that the 
girlish friendships formed there might last into later 
social life, and also accustom Kitty to the atmos- 
phere of these people so that she might be at ease 
with them in the city. She also desired the school 
to be out of Boston. 

She was successful in her search, finding a 
school which fulfilled these conditions only ten miles 
from the city. 


126 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


It was thought best, however, that Kitty should 
not enter upon her school life until after the Chris- 
mas holidays, so the rest of the autumn was spent 
in Boston, and it glided happily away. 


A School Girl Friendship. 





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CHAPTER XIV. 


Mrs. De Witf s foresight seemed likely to speed- 
ily reap its reward. She had, in making arrange- 
ments for her niece's entry into the school, dropped 
a hint that her charge was a great heiress, and the 
rumor soon spread, and made the girl an object of 
distinction. Kitty had not been at school six weeks 
till Pearl Dudley and she were great friends. 

No more lightsome, merry leaf ever danced on 
the topmost bough of a sturdy family tree than 
Pearl Dudley. Descended from one of the families 
who came over with Winthrop, and whose force of 
character showed in a long line of Congressmen, 
Judges, and Clergymen, she herself was a mischief 
loving, charming contradiction of them all. 

The lessons she learned in the day slipped out 
of her head over night. French verbs and arbitrary 
German genders refused to abide with her. Mathe- 
matics were still more elusive. They simply declined 
her acquaintance altogether. 

But one talent she had. She was the best pianist 
in the school, and her singing voice was of great 
compass, sweetness and power. It was intended 
that she should stay at Lasell Seminary till she 
should have exhausted the really extensive musical 
resources of the school, and then go to Heidelberg 
to study. 


129 


130 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


It was very strange that this airy piece of 
thistle-down, whose glittering wings had never been 
wet with the dew of any kind of sorrow, should have 
attracted, and been attracted by, quiet mannered, 
studious, easily learning Katherine Cresap, whose 
life on the Missouri farm Pearl could not have even 
imagined in her wildest flights of fancy; but so it 
was. Perhaps Kitty instinctively knew that under- 
neath the sparkling surface ran the deep, strong 
current of Puritan principle; and on her side Pearl 
may have felt the charm of the strong feeling, im- 
pulsive, loyally loving Cavaliers, in this, their 
chastened daughter. 

When Kitty first entered the school there were 
no private rooms vacant, and she was given a bed 
in one of the dormitories. But soon after, two sis- 
ters, who had shared a room between them, were 
called home; and Pearl interceded with the author- 
ities, and obtained permission to occupy the room 
with Kitty. Then was her happiness complete. 

“Kitty cat, what kind of hero do you most ad- 
mire ?” 

They were sitting comfortably wrapped in their 
dressing jackets, their slippered feet against the ra- 
diator. Each was brushing out her hair before 
braiding it for the night. 

“Why, I don’t know,” answered Kitty. “I sup- 
pose men like Washington or Lincoln. I think Lin- 
coln first.” 


A SCHOOL GIRL FRIENDSHIP 


131 


'‘Oh, I don’t mean that. I mean a personal 
hero. A — a lover, you know.” 

“Oh, that’s different. I haven’t thought much 
about it. Suppose you begin and give your idea of 
one, while I collect my thoughts to do so weighty a 
subject justice.” 

“Well, I think I should like him to be tall, with 
light brown hair, and dark brown eyes.” 

“What an odd combination,” laughed Kitty. 
“Well now, what is your ideal?” 

“I think I should like him to be very clever, 
much more gifted than myself,” considered Kitty. 
“I should like him to write books, books that would 
make the people laugh and cry. And I should want 
him to have been waiting for me with that feeling 
which a little poem in my scrap book describes.” 

“What is that? You will have to recite it 
for me.” 

Kitty poised her brush in mid-air and repeated 
softly : 

“ ‘Whether her hair be golden or raven. 

Whether her eyes be hazel or blue, 

I know not now, but it will be engraven 
Some sweet day as my loveliest hue. 

“ ‘She may be humble or proud, my lady. 

Or that sweet calm that is just between; 

But whenever she comes she will find me ready 
To do her homage- my queen, my queen.’ ” 


132 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“You dear,” said Pearl, squeezing Kitty to her 
side, “you always know some quotation that is just 
Apropos. How in the world do you remember 
them ?” 

“It just comes naturally, I suppose. I don’t 
recall ever having made a conscious effort to mem- 
orize anything.” 

“So you want a genius,” mused Pearl. “But 
see here, Kitty, I have heard that geniuses are often 
very unpleasant people to live with.” 

“Oh, that is because they are not congenially 
mated,” assented Kitty with the ready theory of 
youth. “Of course they must have sympathetic en- 
vironment. Now, I have read that Lady Byron 
said to her husband soon after their marriage, ‘And 
when, my lord, do you mean to leave off your habit 
of rhyming?’ No wonder they parted!” 

“But you wouldn’t defend Byron, Kitty?” 

“No, I don’t think 1 could do that. I just gave 
that as an instance, you know. 

“But what must your hero look like?” persisted 
Pearl. 

“Well, I like men to be tall, too; and I think 
I like dark hair and eyes, for men, you know,” look- 
ing at Pearl’s golden hair and big blue eyes. 

“Lucky girl,” laughed Pearl. “If that is your 
ideal you will have the felicity of meeting him to- 
morrow in the person of our deiitsch Lehrer, Herr 
Steinberg. You know he has been away ever since 
you have been here, attending some friend who is 


A SCHOOL GIRL FRIENDSHIP 


133 


ill, but he got back today, Madame Renault told me, 
and will take his classes tomorrow. And I don’t 
at all know my Aiifgahe,” she added, with a grimace. 

“We’ll have time to go over it tomorrow be- 
fore the recitation, and I will help you,” consoled 
Kitty. 

“You see,” continued Pearl, “Herr Steinberg 
is earning a part of his college expenses, I suspect 
the greater part. He is a Sophomore — though not 
at all like most pert Sophs — at Harvard, and he 
comes out here every day to teach the German 
classes. There are rumors that he belongs to a noble 
family in Germany. His room-mate told me the 
Herr often gets letters from his home with a crest or 
some kind of heraldic device on them. But he is a 
younger son, and has no other prospects over there 
than to be a kind of a pensioned hanger-on, so he 
came to ‘The Land of the Free’ to make a career 
for himself.” 

“Couldn’t have selected a better place to do it,” 
said loyal Kitty. “I do love independent people.” 
She sighed, remembering her father’s view of the 
pension. 

“Oh, it is so romantic ! He is so handsome. I 
know you will fall in love with each other,” laughed 
Pearl. 

“Why don’t you appropriate him yourself?” 
retorted Kitty. “You can well afford to overlook 
the difference of a shade or two in his hair for such 
a paragon.” 


134 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“Oh, I am too giddy and silly. He is fearfully 
learned already, and will be more so, and I only care 
for fun. The only serious taste I have apart from 
music is for housekeeping. I should really like to 
order a household to suit myself — and that prob- 
lematical husband. But if Herr Steinberg were he, 
it would be a striking instance of that want of sym- 
pathy of which you spoke. Why, in one of his 
studious fits he might shut me up in one of his big 
books, and make a modern Ginevra of me. My 
hair is done,” she added, throwing back a long braid 
of spun gold. “Is yours?” 

“Yes,” answered Kitty as she deftly tied her 
braid. It had grown to be a warm chestnut color 
with gold threads in it that matched the yellow 
gleams sometimes seen in her eyes. “Where are 
the Prayer Books ?” 

“Here is yours, where it ought to be, of course, 
but mine — why, here it is, too, for a wonder.” 

This was another bond between them. Pearl’s 
mother was an Episcopalian, and had brought her 
daughter up in the mother church. 

They walked over to Pearl’s bed with their 
arms around each other, and their books open at 
the office for Family Evening Prayer, and, kneeling, 
gravely and reverently read it aloud in accord. 
Then their fair young heads were bowed while each 
inaudibly preferred her own individual petition. In 
Kitty’s prayer her mother and sister were never for- 
gotten. 


A SCHOOL GIRL FRIENDSHIP 


135 


“Pearl,” called Kitty a little later from her own 
bed across the room, “what is a German doing with 
dark eyes?” 

“Seeing with them, I suppose,” giggled Pearl. 
“Or maybe he is sleeping with them, just now.” 

“Well, I thought all Germans had light hair 
and blue eyes,” she said. 

“Why, there are some dark Germans, too. But 
I am so sleepy. Giite nacht. Schlafen Sie wohl” 
murmured Pearl, drowsily. 

''Giite nacht, Desgleichen,” answered Kitty. 

Her bed was near a window. She lay looking 
out at the stars, as she had so often done at home, 
and went over her life in memory. In doing so she 
recalled John Raynor. She wondered for a moment 
where he might be. Captain Cresap had received 
one letter from Mr. Raynor after the latter’s arrival 
in Kansas. They had settled at Topeka. After that 
no more was heard from them. But Kitty’s thoughts 
did not dwell long on John. She remembered him 
as a little boy, and little boys are easily dismissed 
from the minds of young ladies of sixteen. 





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CHAPTER XV. 


Although pleasingly conscious of a perfect les- 
son, it was with some trepidation that Kitty entered 
the German class the next day. Pearl was with 
her ready to be amused by the situation she had con- 
jured up, in spite of the fact that her lesson was 
anything but perfect. It was Kitty’s conscious- 
ness of this attitude of Pearl’s that confused her. 

But curiosity got the better of diffidence, and 
so soon as she was seated Kitty looked toward the 
teacher’s desk. Herr Steinberg stood beside it and 
calmly surveyed the class. How was it that she 
instantly knew him for not only a cultured, but 
also a highbred gentleman ? Was it written on the 
delicately chiseled, yet strong, face, or was it the 
elegant and rather tall figure that expressed it? 
No matter why, all who looked felt that here was 
a man who knew who his fathers were for many 
generations back. Kitty unconsciously straightened 
up a little, and remembered with comfort that she 
was a Cresap. 

That evening Pearl left the room for a time 
and Kitty sat by the window and mused. She 
thought of her mother and Eloise. Mrs. Carew 
wrote but seldom and it had been some time since 
Kitty had heard from her. She had a vague plan 

139 


140 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


of sometime going back to the farm and taking 
Eloise away to educate her. That must be after 
she became self-supporting, for she knew, both in- 
stinctively and from something her aunt had said, 
that Mrs. De Witt would never aid her mother 
or sister. They were not of her blood. Kitty’s 
plans for her sister were naturally unformed and 
unsatisfactory, for how could she part mother and 
child? 

With a sigh she turned her attention from 
them to some words that were beating on another 
side of her consciousness. “The love of her earth 

life ” “And life meant much to her ” 

“And a faithful heart’s devotion,” they seemed to 
whisper. 

''Ach” her thought ran on, expressed in play- 
ful imitation of the German construction, “I will 
my lessons hard be-study, and will myself famous 

make, and then he will admire me, and ” 

Here some words of Mrs. Browning’s intruded 
themselves rather unpleasantly on her memory. 

“There it is. 

We women are too apt to look to one. 

Which proves a certain impotence in art. 

We strain our natures at doing something great 
Far less because ’tis something great to do 
Than, haply, that we, so, commend ourselves 
To some one friend.” 

“But art of itself is so cold, though so beau- 
tiful,” mused Kitty as if answering. “It is better 


DER HERR PROFESSOR 


141 


to be obscure and happy in the valley than fa- 
mous and lonely on the mountain top; if the choice 
must lie between them. But I don’t see why it 
need. Heinrich Steinberg has set out for the sum- 
mit. People say he is very ambitious. I will climb 
up with him. Or, if we do not go up together we 
will surely meet at the top. The space is rather 
limited up there, I’ve read,” she added with a little 
grimace. Here the entrance of Pearl broke up her 
reverie. 

Because Pearl intended to go to Germany to 
finish her musical education her people particularly 
wished her to become proficient in the German 
language. Kitty had previously paid more atten- 
tion to her French, at her aunt’s desire, but now 
she found a new interest in German. . Pearl wished 
to talk special lessons in the language, and it was 
arranged that the two girls should go every other 
day to the home of an aunt of Pearl’s who lived 
in the town, and take an extra lesson. Herr Stein- 
berg was to give the instruction, and Pearl’s aunt 
was to sit with the young people during the lesson 
hour, and they were permitted to prepare this les- 
son in their room in the evening. 

The lessons were less formal than the set recita- 
tions, and consisted largely of conversations in Ger- 
man. One day the girls begged the professor to 
recite a poem, and he complied by repeating, with 
great feeling, Lingg’s “Heimkehr.” 


142 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“In meine Heimat kam ich wieder, 

Es war die alte Heimat noch, 

Dieselbe Luft, dieselben Lieder, 

Und alles war wie anders doch. 

Die Welle rauschte wie vor Zeiten, 

Am Waldweg sprang wie sonst das Reh, 
Von fern erklang ein Abendlauten, 

Die Bergen glanzten aus dem See. 

Doch vor dem Haus, wo uns vor Jahren 
Die Mutter stetz empfing, dort sah 
Ich fremde Menschen, fremd Gebaren, 

Wie weh’, wie weh’ mir da geschah! 

Mir war als rief aus den Wogen : 

Elieh’, flieh’, und ohne Wiederkehr! 

Die du geliebt, sind fortgezogen, 

Und kehren nimmer, nimmermehr!” 

“That is beautiful, what I caught of it,” said 
Pearl, glancing at Kitty, whose lashes looked a little 
teary. “Would you mind reciting it more slowly, 
line by line, and let us see if we can translate it?” 

“Perhaps,” interposed thoughtful Kitty, “the 
poem is a favorite of Herr Steinberg’s, and he might 
not wish to hear us pull it to pieces in that fashion.” 

“Nein! nein!’^ cried the young professor, “I 
do not feel so about it. It will do very well for a 
lesson.” He spoke English with ease and fluency, 


DER HERR PROFESSOR 


143 


only falling back to the construction of his mother 
tongue when excited. Now he repeated the first 
line. 

meine Heiniat kam ich wieder” 

“To my home came I again,” very literally 
translated Kitty. 

'‘Es war die alte Heimat noch” went on the 
professor. 

“It was the old home still,” said Pearl, de- 
lighted to know so much. 

''Dieselbe Luft, dieselhen Lieder,” lined out 
Herr Steinberg. 

“The same air, the same song,” said Kitty. 

'‘Lieder is plural,” gently reminded the pro- 
fessor. “Observe that the adjective is inflected, 
also.” 

“Oh, yes,” corrected Kitty. “The same air, 
the same songs.” 

''So isfs recht,” commended the professor. 

In this manner they went through the entire 
poem. At the close of the lesson Herr Steinberg 
wrote out a copy and gave it to his pupils, telling 
them they might memorize it, and also write a 
rhymed translation for the next lesson. 

The last condition drew forth many plaints 
from Pearl that evening. 

“Why, I can’t rhyme cat and rat,” she said. 

“The cat can,” laughed Kitty. “I wouldn’t 
let a cat outdo me, Pearl.” 


144 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“The meaning of the last two lines is pretty 
and so affecting/’ she went on. “Those whom thou 
hast loved are gone forth and will never more re- 
turn. But how in the world shall we put that into 
rhyme and rhythm in English?” 

“I’m sure / don’t know,” answered Pearl. “I 
don’t mean to try. It is silly to attempt the im- 
possible. It will be more than I can do to mem- 
orize the poem. Now with you it is different.” 

“It is hard to keep the beauty in a transla- 
tion,” remarked Kitty. “It is so disillusioning. I 
always thought Pomme de Terre such a pretty name 
for a river, and that horrid French book informs 
me that it means 'apples of the earth.’ That is 
pretty enough, too; but then it goes on to say that 
by apples of the earth potatoes are meant. Fancy, 
Potato Creek! Ugh!” 

“Poor Kitty,” laughed Pearl. “Would Kar- 
t off el Creek do any better?” 

“How would Mr. Stone-mountain do for Herr 
Steinberg?” retaliated Kitty. 

“Oh, don’t,” and Pearl put her pink palms over 
her ears. “That is really too horrid.” 

“Well, I am going to work,” said Kitty de- 
terminedly, sitting down at the table under the gas 
jet. “I wish the German ‘f’ did not look so like one 
of the 's’s’,” she added as she opened a book. 

After an hour’s hard work, attended by fre- 
quent consultations of the vocabulary in a search 
for synonyms, she produced the following; 


DER HERR PROFESSOR 


145 


“I came back to my home again, 

It was the old home still, 

The self-same air and songs as then. 

Yet changed from mount to rill. 

The wave rustled as long ago. 

O’er the wood-path sprang the deer. 

From afar the vesper-bell rang low. 

The mountain glimmered from the mere. 

Before the house, where us for years 
The mother always glad received. 

Strange men and manners through my tears 
I saw. Oh ! what a pang those tears relieved ! 

To me a voice cried from the waves, 

Flee, flee, and return thou not, for 
Those whom thou loved’st are in their graves. 
And back will come never, nevermore !” 

“Whyee!” praised Pearl when she had coaxed 
Kitty to read the poem to her, “that is just splendid, 
I did not know I had a poetess for a room-mate.” 

“You haven’t,”, answered Kitty. “There is 
one especially weak place. ‘Yet changed from 
mount to rill.’ That sounds as if it were the land- 
scape that had changed, whereas the idea is that 
all material things remained the same, while the 
spirit — the people and the customs — sadly changed. 
But I couldn’t find the rhyme for the exact mean- 


146 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


ing, so I sacrificed the thought to the form. Some 
better poetry does that, sometimes, but I hope the 
Herr Professor won’t notice it.” 

He did ; but he thought the poem so good for 
one who had studied the language for so short a 
time that he forebore to criticise. 

Instead he asked for a copy of the translation, 
and Kitty wrote out one in her very neatest hand, 
and was proud and happy to give it to him at the 
next lesson. 


I 


Kitty Rnds Her Vocation, 



CHAPTER XVI. 


Kitty and Pearl passed the mid-summer vaca- 
tion at their homes in Boston, and it was long re- 
membered by each, as one of the happiest seasons of 
her life. 

Mrs. Dudley had been induced, by considerable 
coaxing on Pearl’s part, to call on Mrs. De Witt. 
As a common experience with that lady’s callers, 
she went away with mixed emotions, and no positive 
knowledge. Mrs. De Witt perceived that this friend- 
ship would be of great advantage in her plans for 
Kitty, and exerted herself to make a good impression 
on her visitor. She succeeded so far as impressing 
Mrs. Dudley that she, Mrs. De Witt, was a lady 
born and bred, but when Mrs. Dudley attempted to 
recall where born and where bred, she found that 
ihe had not been informed on those points, and that 
n that important particular her call had failed of 
its object. 

Still Mrs. Dudley had seen enough to convince 
her that she might at least allow this friendship of 
her daughter’s, the more safely so that it was only 
a school girl attachment, and would most likely run 
its course before Pearl’s debut in society. 

So the girls rode and drove and visitea to- 
gether. At Mrs. Dudley’s earnest solicitation, Mrs. 

149 


150 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


De Witt allowed Kitty to spend several weeks at 
Bar Harbor with the Dudleys, to which resort she 
herself steadily refused to go. Here they had a 
much more enjoyable time than did the young ladies 
who were ‘‘out” and who were each expected to 
monopolize the attentions of at least one young man. 
The proportion of which commodity being about 
one man to a dozen girls, the proposition was ren- 
dered a tolerably difficult one to those young wom- 
en, and must have hampered their enjoyment con- 
siderably. 

An unusually heated term setting in on their 
return to town, Mrs. De Witt carried off both girls 
for a round of the summer hotels in the Green 
Mountains. It was observable that she made a very 
short stay at Mount Mansfield and other noted 
places, spending more time at the less frequented 
resorts. 

Kitty enjoyed this trip more than Bar Harbor. 
It reminded her somewhat of her native Ozark coun- 
try, though real mountain scenery is foreign to the 
latter’s uplift. 

On their return to town from their mountain 
trip, Mrs. De Witt found awaiting her a letter from 
Mrs. Carew that so angered her that she brought 
it to Kitty. 

“What in the world does your mother mean?” 
she asked with flashing eyes. “What claim has she 
on me that she should apply to me for money?” 


KITTIY FINDS HER VOCATION 


151 


“Is anyone sick” anxiously asked Kitty, her 
face paling. “Or is there any trouble ?” 

“No,” answered her aunt, “at least she does not 
mention any illness or misfortune, except that the 
crops have been poor this year, and that Mr. Carew 
brings but little money home. What did she ever 
marry such a trifling man for, anyway?” 

“Elder Carew is a really good man. Aunt 
Anne,” defended Kitty, a little lamely. 

“Oh, yes, I suppose he is good enough. Indeed 
I don’t know but he is too good tor a woman who 
has no more pride than to ask aid from her first hus- 
band’s relatives after replacing him with a second,” 
retorted Mrs. De Witt. 

While Kitty was trying to frame some excuse 
for her mother, her aunt went on. 

“Yes, there is little doubt that he is nearer her 
level than was poor Ralph, but he is an unfit suc- 
cessor to my brother.” 

Kitty was still silent, for that was a sore point 
with herself, so Mrs. De Witt continued : 

“Well, they need not look to me. I can do 
nothing for them, nor shall you. Do not send them 
any of your allowance. I positively forbid it. If 
you disobey I shall be compelled to withdraw it.” 

Then indeed Kitty found her tongue. 

“You need not fear that I shall disobey. Aunt 
Anne,” she said with quiet dignity. “It is your 
money to dispose of as you like. But I wish I could 


152 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


earn some myself,” and the tears brimmed her eyes 
as for the first time she felt her dependence. 

“There, don’t grieve, ma petite” said her aunt, 
relenting somewhat. “They don’t really need any- 
thing, I dare say. Nor do you, either,” and relaps- 
ing into her usual languid grace she swept from the 
room. 

When Kitty first arrived in Boston, she had 
moods of longing for her aunt’s affection, and for 
some demonstration of it, but Mrs. De Witt had al- 
ways held her at arm’s length. Kitty had often 
thought of telling her of the pension complication 
and asking her advice, but she both feared that her 
aunt, in her evident dislike of her mother, might 
take a harmful action in the matter, and also found 
it difficult to approach Mrs. De Witt about any- 
thing. Aunt and niece never held long or confi- 
dential conversations, the one recorded above being 
about as long as any they ever had together. 

Kitty’s previous experiences since her father’s 
death had prepared her for bearing this form of 
loneliness, and she had grown to expect nothing 
else, and had given all of her affection not centered 
on little Eloise, to Pearl. 

The girl was saddened by this act of her moth- 
er’s. She was not yet well enough versed in ethics 
to trace Mrs. Carew’s gradual deterioration of char- 
acter, but this new evidence of her greed and want 
of self-respect hurt her. Suddenly a ray of com- 


A SCHOOL GIRL FRIENDSHIP 


153 


fort came to her. Perhaps her mother had stopped 
the pension. 

She finally almost convinced herself that this 
was the case, and wondered if she herself could not 
in some way make up its loss to her mother. Surely 
it was unjust that she should have so many luxuries 
while her own mother and sister might be suffering 
for necessaries. But how could she help them? 

The only money over which she had any con- 
trol was a small sum her aunt allowed her for pin 
money. She would have gladly sent this to her 
mother, but her aunt had forbade her, and Kitty 
considered that it was within her right to do so. 

She thought of several plans by which she 
might possibly earn some money, but none of them, 
she felt sure, would meet with her aunt’s sanction. 

At last she remembered her stories, written 
at intervals in the last few years. She got out the 
one she considered best, carefully copied it that it 
might look fresh, and sent it to a leading magazine 
published in the city. 

In a few days it came back, accompanied by 
the usual slip of declination. 

It was while she was still sore over this failure 
that she was sitting in the reading room of one of 
the Public Libraries. The main building on Copley 
Square was not at that time built, but this was large 
and commodious. She chanced to fix her attention 
on one of the assistant librarians who looked par- 
ticularly happy and prosperous, and an inspiration 


154 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


came to her which soon crystallized into a resolve. 
She, too, would be a librarian. It would be more 
pleasant, and eventually more profitable, than teach- 
ing. 

Her mother and Eloise could get along till she 
was through school. There would then be plenty 
of time to educate her sister. How lucky that she 
should have so taken to French and German. They 
were just what would be needed in library work. 

She went back to school in September and at- 
tacked those languages afresh with the vigor and 
persistence of a settled purpose. Herr Steinberg 
still had charge of the German class. 


Five Years of Europe. 


I 



CHAPTER XVIL 


The lights and shadows of three years glided 
swifty over the heads of the girl friends and brought 
their day of graduation. Pearl left school a fine 
musician, and Kitty an accomplished linguist. Herr 
Steinberg had finished his college course a year be- 
fore, and was now in Heidelberg taking some spe- 
cial work. His name 'had lately appeared in sev- 
eral scientific journals, copies of which he forwarded 
to Kitty; for quite a friendship, founded on a 
smilarity of ambitions and tastes, had grown up 
between them during their school life, though so 
far it seemed to be entirely a Platonic attachment 
on his part, and Kitty would not allow even to her- 
self, that it was anything else on hers. Yet his in- 
fluence dominated her thought life. 

School done, Kitty most earnestly wished to 
take up library work. Not from a longing to get 
out into the world, or from a desire for a career, 
Katherine Cresap was naturally something of the 
clinging vine type, but she had imbided from her 
father’s early teaching a rigid honesty, an idea that 
every person should do some work in the world in 
return for the privilege of living in it. If a woman 
was so fortunately situated as to be able to do this 
work at home and for those she loved, so much 


157 


158 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


the better for her; but duty called on her to fill 
some place, and she could not feel that she was really 
needed in her aunt’s home. Beside, there was 
Eloise. 

“But we have always intended to go to Eu- 
rope,” remonstrated her aunt when Kitty broached 
her plan. 

“But really. Aunt Anne,” answered Kitty, “it 
is time I should be doing something. Just think, I 
am past twenty.” 

“Doing something? The Cresaps have always 
done something! P'or centuries they have been 
prominent in peace and war. But their women have 
been home keepers and home makers. No one of 
them ever went out into the world to make a liv- 
ing.” 

“Yes,” assented Kitty, “but they were either 
wives or daughters, with a definite place in a home 
to fill which entitled them to support.” 

“Not always, by any means. Often a relative 
no nearer than a second cousin has been brought 
up in the family. The heads of the different branches 
of the family would have been ashamed to let any 
of its women go out to work.” 

Kitty privately thought that outside life might 
have been preferable to the life of dependence some 
of those distant relatives probably lived, but she 
forbore to express the idea. She had somewhat of 
that unfortunate temperament which so shrinks 
from wounding other people’s feelings that it allows 


FIVE YEARS OF EUROPE 


159 


its own to be trampled on till the aggressor, think- 
ing the weakness due to a want of spirit, goes so 
far that the more gentle soul can bear no longer, and 
rises up and breaks the bond entirely asunder. It 
would probably be better if it were remembered that 
the prompt resenting of a small wrong often pre- 
vents a greater being offered. 

“But times have changed. Aunt Anne. A 
great many girls of good family do some outside 
work now,” pursued Kitty. 

“Do any of the Dudley’s set do so?” Mrs. De 
Witt asked. 

“No,” acknowledged Kitty. “Not people just 
like them, but still very respectable people.” 

Mrs. De Witt now tried another and more 
promising tack. She had found that Mrs. Carew 
had told the truth about her daughter. If once con- 
vinced a given course was right, she would take it, 
however much it might be against her own inclina- 
tions. 

“You forget that you owe me a debt that you 
cannot repay in money. You can best repay it in 
obedience and compliance with my wishes. But 
we will compromise. If after spending a year in 
Europe you still wish to work in the library you 
may do so.” 

She had no intention of ever yielding her con- 
sent, but thought a year’s travel would change 
Kitty’s mind. Possibly some eligible young man 
might assist the change. 


160 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“Besides,” she went on, “if you must go into 
the library work you can learn much about the pro- 
fession by visiting those in Europe.” 

This argument had weight with Kitty, but it 
was the idea that she owed it to Mrs. De Witt to 
repay her in the manner in which her aunt preferred 
that finally decided her to make the European trip. 

So one summer day Mrs. Dudley and her sis- 
ter, the aunt who had chaperoned the German les- 
sons, Pearl, Mrs. De Witt and Kitty stood on the 
deck of an outward bound steamer and saw the 
shores of their native land recede into the under- 
world. 

Mrs. Dudley and her party stayed some time in 
Paris, but Mrs. De Witt seemed restless and wor- 
ried there, and after greeting a few old friends, 
and visiting her husband’s grave, on which errand 
she did not invite Kitty to accompany her, she hur- 
ried her away. This was a surprise to the rest 
of the party, as they had supposed she would like 
to spend some time in the city where twenty years 
of her life — presumedly the happiest years — had 
been lived. 

Most of that summer was spent in Vienna and 
Berlin. Kitty would have liked to have visited 
Heidelberg, but Mrs. De Witt did not suggest it, and 
her niece would not. Kitty was reconciled, how- 
ever, to the long stay in those cities by the oppor- 
tunities of examining their extensive libraries. 

The winter they spent in Rome. Here Mrs. 


FIVE YEARS OF EUROPE 


161 


De Witt succeeded in getting Kitty interested, to 
some extent, in society ; but when a diminutive 
Italian Prince with an infinitesimal income asked 
her aunt for Kitty’s hand, he was promptly sent 
about his business. Mrs. De Witt understood that 
the proposal was addressed solely to her heiress, 
and thought the shop-worn title too high priced. 
Kitty felt a sense of outrage. Though not in the 
least sentimental, the image of Herr Steinberg un- 
consciously occupied her mind, and every man she 
met was measured by it. Most of them fell short. 

But presently the humorous side of it struck 

her. 

“Act! Hebe Tante/' she said — whenever she 
dropped English she always spoke German, if the 
person addressed understood it — “Ach! Hebe Tante, 
you missed an opportunity for playing the stern 
aunt, determined to sacrifice her lovely niece on the 
altar of her ambition. Y^ou may never get such a 
chance again.” 

“Oui et non, ma chere. If it had been an Eng- 
lish nobleman I should have essayed the role, but a 
petty Italian Prince ! They are more common than 
French Counts, bogus and otherwise. They would 
not rank with an English squire,” answered Mrs. 
De Witt. 

It was during this winter that Kitty first had 
the pleasure of seeing her name at the head of a 
printed article. She had sent a story, founded on 
an incident she had seen in Rome, to a home maga- 


162 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


zine, and the foreign stamp won a ready acceptance, 
and she received with it a small check. Encouraged, 
she set to work in earnest, and soon had access to 
several first class publications in the United States. 

Though essaying but one branch of art — lit- 
erature — she loved art in all its forms, and wan- 
dered through miles of galleries of paintings and 
sculptures, and visited the old churches, with tire- 
less energy. 

When the year stipulated for rolled away, 
Kitty’s thoughts turned lovingly homeward, despite 
these attractions, but Mrs. De Witt was taken ill 
as the result of an unlucky moonlight trip to the 
Coliseum. Contrary Lo the general run of Roman 
fever, it was a very lingering illness, and so soon 
as she was able to travel she insisted on trying the 
waters of Carlsbad. 

Her recovery was very slow. Indeed, she never 
succeeded in getting the malaria entirely out of her 
system, though she tried one health resort after 
another till all Europe, nearly, had been traveled 
over, and five years had passed since leaving Amer- 
ica. 

At the end of that time Kitty had saved enough 
from the sales of her writings to pay her way home, 
and, not having heard from her mother and Eloise 
for many months, she showed such decided signs 
of rebellion that her aunt at last turned her face 
westward, but on their way they took a short tour 


FIVE YEARS OF EUROPE 


163 


through England and Scotland, and finally sailed 
from Liverpool. 

Pearl had some time since finished her musical 
course in Germany, and was now in Boston, and 
her warm welcome was Kitty’s greatest pleasure 
as she again set foot on her native soil. 


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CHAPTER XVIIL 


On her return to America, Kitty found a letter 
from her monther awaiting her. Among other 
things, Mrs. Carew said that a public school had 
at last been started about two miles from the farm, 
and that Eloise, who was now eleven years old, at- 
tended it in good weather, but as the term was very 
short she was not likely to make much progress. 
She added, however, that she herself had taught 
the child to read, and that she would “rather read 
than eat,” a taste of which her mother seemed very 
proud, but which made Kitty, who well knew what 
style of literature Mrs. Carew was likely to supply 
her daughter, very uneasy. 

After reading this letter, Kitty sat down and 
carefully thought over the whole situation. Her 
aunt would do nothing for Eloise. In justice, there 
was no reason why she should. So long as she 
stayed with Mrs. De Witt she herself could not. 
Her writings did not yet bring in enough for sure 
support for one, and she had no other independent 
income. To be sure, it was within the possibilities 
that she might marry, and so have a home of her 
own to which to bring Eloise, but she remembered 
Herr Steinberg, and put that thought from her as 
too uncertain to be allowed as a factor in her rea- 


167 


168 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


soiling. Yet she could not be satisfied to go on and 
live a life of ease and culture and leave her only 
sister to the narrow, dwarfing environment from 
which she herself had been rescued, not even to 
please her rescuer. 

No, she must go to work. She would go per- 
sonally to the Board of Trustees and apply for an 
assistant’s place in some one of the libraries. But 
she must have some countenance and assistance. To 
whom should she go to obtain it ? 

Years before, on her first arrival in Boston, 
one of her greatest pleasures had been the oppor- 
tunity to worship according to the forms of her 
father’s church. The first time she did so riveted 
the love she had always felt for it, a love born of her 
father’s description of its services. 

There was an Episcopal church nearer to Mrs. 
De Witt’s home than was Trinity Church, but that 
first Sunday her aunt had taken her to the latter, 
then just finished. The first sight of the stately 
pile on Copley Square fairly took her breath away, 
and the interior impressed her still more. 

The dim light, flecked by rainbow rays from 
the lofty stained windows ; the richly dressed and 
reverent worshippers; the strains from the great 
pipe organ, now deep, now glad; the saintly seem- 
ing faces of the choir as they filed in with the pro- 
cessional ; and then that beautiful Liturgy that has 
consoled in sorrow and sympathized in joy for cen- 
turies; all these made her feel indeed that “The 


KITTY LEAVES HOME 


169 


Lord is in his holy temple,” and that it was mete 
that “all the earth keep silent before him.” 

Then the magnificent figure and magnetic 
presence of Phillips Brooks as he came to the reading 
desk and delivered one of his wonderful sermons held 
her attention spellbound. She thought of Hughes’ 
description of Tom Brown’s first chapel service at 
Rugby, and rejoiced that she belonged to a race that 
had given such men as Dr. Arnold and the author 
of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” to the world ; and 
the vital living religion that does not make saints 
of men on earth, but enables them to so live that 
they may become saints in Heaven took a deep hold 
on her. 

She had already been baptized by a minister 
of the Methodist Communion. Pier father had had 
that done when she was an infant; and now she 
requested her aunt to allow her to join a confirma- 
tion class that was forming, which Mrs. De Witt 
approving, was accordingly done, and she was con- 
firmed. 

One Sunday soon after her return from Europe, 
she was sitting in her own church listening to Pearl’s 
voice singing the offertory solo with wonderful 
sweetness and power, when the thought came to her 
to go to her rector on the morrow and ask his as- 
sistance. 

She did so. Feeling that she could not explain 
just why she wanted employment without disloyalty 


170 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


to her mother and aunt, she merely stated that she 
wished to get a place in the Public Library. 

Mr. Courtney left his study, in which he always 
received such of his parishoners as he judged were 
calling on other than social matters, and went in 
search of his wife. Finding her at leisure, he brought 
her back with him; the carriage was ordered, and 
they drove round to the places of business of the 
members of the Board of Trustees. 

It fell out that an assistant who could speak 
French and German fluently was then just needed, 
and Kitty received such encouragement that Mr. 
and Mrs. Courtney assured her that she might feel 
almost sure of the place, thought it would not be 
fully determined till the next meeting of the Board. 

The Board meeting occurred soon, and Kitty 
was given the place at what seemed to her a very 
liberal salary. Now came the tug of war, to break 
the news to her aunt. 

As she had expected, Mrs. De Witt was furious. 

‘T might have known it,” she said bitterly; 
“the poor white trash blood will show. • Here I have 
reared you and spent no end of money on you. You 
could enter society and make a match that would do 
me credit, beside securing your own happiness for 
life,, and you choose to go and work like a darkey !” 

If Kitty had not been so grieved and indignant, 
it would have amused her to hear her dignified and 
elegant aunt relapse into such an expression, for 
though so gentle, she had a keen sense of humor. 


KITTY LEAVES HOME 


171 


“Indeed, you mistake. Aunt Anne,” she said. 
“It is because I am so sure that my father would 
approve my going to work that I feel it is right. 
He always believed that every person should earn 
his living in some way. It would be mother who 
would be likeliest to agree with you in this matter.” 

“That is not so. It is your mother’s poor 
folksy way that is coming out in you,” flatly con- 
tradicted Mrs. De Witt. Then she remembered 
that while she was trying to carry her own point 
by arguing that her brother would have wished Kitty 
to lead an independent life, she herself had know- 
ingly acted against his last wishes in aiding his 
daughter. The consciousness of this irritated her, 
vexing her still more with her niece, and she added : 

“Very well, do as you choose. Goodness knows 
you are old enough ! Only you don’t cut up any 
such unconventional caper in my house. Since you 
are so independent, have the kindness to find a home 
elsewhere 

“I had meant to pay you board. Aunt,” said 
Kitty. 

“Pay board! I am not keeping a boarding 
house! What would any sum you could afford to 
pay be to me ? No, you may clear out, bag and bag- 
gage !” 

“I will if you really wish it,” answered Kitty. 

“Yes, I do wish it. Take all your private be- 
longings with you, too,” said Mrs. De Witt, angrily. 
“I don’t wish to be annoyed with the sight of them. 


172 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


I shall be from home the rest of the day. When I 
get back, I hope you will be gone.” 

“Yes, I will be gone,” answered Kitty. ‘T am 
very sorry you are disappointed in me. Aunt Anne, 
but I can do no other way. I am very grateful for 
all you have done for me, and if you ever care to 
see me, I will come.” Her voice trembled and she 
turned and hurried to her own room. 

Here she gave way to her wounded feelings, 
but shortly remembering all she had to do and the 
little time she had to do it in, she bathed her face 
and put on a walking dress. While she did so she 
was considering how to find a boarding place. She 
thought of Pearl, but Miss Dudley probably knew 
nothing of boarding houses short of the Vendome 
or the Hotel Somerset. She decided to go and con- 
sult Mr. Courtney. 

Hearing the sound of wheels, she looked out 
and saw her aunt enter the carriage, and drive away. 
Then she set out on her errand. Mrs. Courtney 
chanced to be in the study and while Kitty was 
asking the rector if he could recommend a boarding 
place, she noted the traces of trouble on the girl’s 
face, and her mother heart was touched. 

“We have plenty of room ourselves,” she said. 
“How would you like to stay with us for a time? 
The very car you will need runs by the door, and 
if you miss it, there is the carriage. The horses 
really need more exercise.” 

“But I wished to pay board,” ventured Kitty, 


KITTY LEAVES HOME 


173 


uncertain how that feature would strike Mrs. Court- 
ney. 

“Well, you can have that privilege, too,” 
laughed Mrs. Courtney. “I’ve been wanting some 
pin money. The wedding fees have been falling 
off lately. I get them, but it seems as if none of 
our people are marrying lately.” 

And it was settled so. Kitty hastened home 
to pack up. In this she was assisted by Mrs. De 
Witt’s maid, who had been directed to help Miss 
Cresap. Firefly and Tige had both died during her 
absence in Europe, so there were only her clothes 
and books to care for. 

There were some things she hesitated about 
taking. One of them was her sables, a beautiful 
and valuable set her aunt had bought for her in 
Paris. Seeing her puzzled look, the maid, who 
guessed something of what had taken place, said 
that Madame had ordered her to pack everything 
that belonged to the Mademoiselle, so Kitty put them 
in the case she was packing, really glad not to have 
to part with their soft rich brownness. 

By night-fall she was ensconced in a large and 
pleasant room in the rectory, feeling less strange 
and lost than she possibly could have done in any 
other new home in the city. 

The next week she began her work. Though 
at first the having a set hour at which she must go 
to work every day was rather irksome^ the duties 
were pleasant and easily learned, and in a short 


174 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


time the harness ceased to gall, and she grew to 
really like the new way of living. 

Especially did she appreciate it when paid her 
first month’s salary. It was the largest sum of 
money she had ever received at one time, her aunt 
having been much more willing to pay her bills than 
to supply her with cash. She paid her board from 
it, and then divided the remainder into three parts. 
One of these she paid into her aunt’s bank account; 
one she expended for books and clothing for Eloise, 
and the other she added to her own small bank ac- 
count, which she had begun with the money paid 
her for her writings ; and then she began to feel as 
If she were indeed of some account in the world. 


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CHAPTER XIX. 


“What have you got, ma? Did Kitty send 
anything pretty? I’ll bet it’s nothing but them 
goody-good old books!” 

Eloise Carew came flying down the path, her 
blonde hair gleaming in the sun, her big blue eyes 
shining, calling out these words as she neared the 
gate. Though but fifteen her face and figure were 
those of a girl of twenty. 

Mrs. Carew’s faded and nervous, yet fleshy 
face, brightened as she turned it to her daughter. 

“It ain’t all books, I reckon, Ellie,” she said, 
clambering down from the wagon. 

She went around to the rear end of it, and 
handed out some parcels to the girl, and then lifted 
out a box with express labels on it, and set it down 
while she turned to the man in the wagon. 

“That’s all, Jeff. You may go on now,” she 
said. The phlegmatic faced man on the front seat 
thereupon drove on to the barnyard. 

Eloise carrying the parcels, and her mother 
the box, they went up the path to the house. The 
place had changed sadly. A most flourishing crop 
of weeds had taken the place of the grassy yard and 
flower bordered walk of Captain Cresap’s time. 
There weeds came so aggressively close to the path 

178 


BACK IN MISSOURI 


179 


that the women’s skirts brushed them aside as they 
passed. 

The" house looked as if no repairs had been 
made on it for years. Uncle Eph and his wife had 
been replaced by a pair by the name of Thomp- 
son, white people, who worked the farm on shares, 
and were too shiftless to perceive that Mrs. Carew’s 
share was always the larger. Hence they suited that 
lady well. 

Carrying the box into the wide hall used as a 
sitting room, they soon had it open. At the top 
was an entire suit of clothing for Eloise. These 
she exclaimed over with delight, and then sat down 
on the floor by the side of the box, and lifted out 
a book. 

“Armorel of Lyonesse,” she read out the title; 
and then opened it. “Humph! looks as dry as a 
bone, and not a picture in it.” 

She laid it on the floor beside her, and took 
out another. 

“Adam B-e-d-e,” she spelled out, and glanced 
inside the covers. There were some loose printed 
leaves within, evidently cut from a magazine. On 
some of these were illustrations. One was a por- 
trait marked “George Eliot.” 

Eloise, laughing, held it up for her mother 
to see. 

“Just look at that!” she cried. “Homelier than 
a mud fence staked and ridered with tadpoles ! 
Looks like he had on a woman’s dress, too. Why 


180 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


can’t she send some pretty pictures if she must 
send any?” In common with many of her neigh- 
bors, Eloise made the a in can’t long. 

‘‘Oh well, she’s just like her pa. I never could 
see no sense in his books, but them two would just 
pore over them all the while,” said Mrs. Carew. 

“I met Tom Leslie down the road a piece,” 
she went on while the girl still explored the box. 
“Or I would have met him if he had come straight 
on, but when he seen me he took down the timber 
path in a hurry, but I reckon I know him as far 
as I can see him. Now look here, Elbe Carew, 
was he here to see you?” 

“None of your business !” answered the girl. 
“I’m not going to stay cooped up on this old place 
and not see nobody till I am an old maid like Kitty, 
to please you or nobody else.” 

“I reckon it is my business. Miss Pert!” re- 
torted her mother. “I’ve as good mind to whip 
you as ever I had to eat. He ain’t coming here 
for no good, and he ain’t no match for you if he 
was. He just ain’t going to come here, any more 1 
Do you hear? If he does I’ll tell your pa.” 

“Oh, dry up,” dutifully exclaimed her daughter, 
the words coming oddly from the rosebud mouth. 
“I think I see you whipping me! And as for tell- 
ing pa, I reckon two can play at that, if you com- 
mence the game. How would you look if I told 
him about the pension?” and she laughed tri- 
umphantly. 


BACK IN MISSOURI 


181 


“Sh-h!” cautioned Mrs. Carew, sinking back 
in her chair. “Jane’ll hear you. And you ought 
to be ashamed to be always throwing that up to 
me, Elbe, when I did it all for you.” 

Elbe laughed again. 

“Law, ma, you forget you begun it before I 
was born!” she said. 

“Well, I spend pretty much all of it on you, 
anyhow, and always have,” argued Mrs. Carew. 
“And you know, Elbe, that such a pretty girl as 
you can do better than to have Tom Leslie. Some 
rich city man will come along and fall in love with 
you, first you know, like they do in the story books, 
and then Tom Leslie will be nowhere!” 

“You needn’t worry. I am not going to take 
up with Tom, but I’m going to have some fun 
while I wait, so just don’t bother yourself or me 
neither,” answered the girl. 

“But you must be more careful, child. It 
would break my heart if anything should happen 
you. You’re all I’ve got now!” and an unwonted 
moisture came to the mother’s eyes. 

“Say, ma,” said Eloise, a little more softly, 
“did you ever tell Kitty about the twins ?” 

“No, I never did. I didn’t happen to write to 
her for a spell after they was born, and when they 
died, I thought what was the use of troubling her 
about it at all.” 

“Ye-es,” assented Eloise, doubtfully, “but it 
seems as if she ought to know about th.em. All 


182 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


the brothers we ever had, if they did only live six 
months.” 

“Well, it’s no good to worry her about it now. 
If ever she comes out here I’ll tell her, of course.’^ 

“Why don’t Kitty come to see us, ma?” pur- 
sued the girl, still thoughtful. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered her mother, ir- 
ritably. “She’s got too many fine friends in Bos- 
ton, I reckon. She don’t care about her poor rela- 
tions no more.” 

The truth was Kitty had written that she was 
thinking of coming out to visit them, several times, 
but Mrs. Carew had always put her off. She had 
private reasons for not wishing her to come. One 
was that Kitty evidently thought she had stopped 
the pension, and a visit would reveal that she had 
not. Another reason was that she was afraid her 
elder daughter would win the younger child’s af- 
fections from her, a thought she could not tolerate. 

“But,” persisted Eloise, “she keeps sending us 
things, and she has to earn the money for them 
now, and has for the last four years. That don’’t 
look as if she didn’t care for us.” 

“Well, if you want her so mighty bad, maybe 
you’d better write for her to come,” flashed her 
mother. “She’d put a stop to Tom Leslie and all 
the rest of ’em. I’ll bet.” 

“No, indeedy! I don’t want her around boss- 
ing me, if that’s the way she’d do,” hastily decided 
Eloise. 


BACK IN MISSOURI 


183 


“Well, it’s time for supper, and I’m as hungry 
as a bear,” said Mrs. Carew and went out into the 
kitchen, congratulating herself on the way she had 
frightened her younger daughter out of wishing 
for a visit from her sister. The two families lived 
entirely separately, and Mrs. Carew did most of 
the cooking and other house work in hers, that 
Ellie, who went about with a pair of “half-handlers” 
on most of the time, might not coarsen her hands. 

The next day Mrs. Carew stole out to a clump 
of bushes at the foot of the bluff. First looking 
about to see if she were observed, she slipped behind 
them and sat down on a large stone. Then she took 
an envelope from her pocket and drew a letter 
from it. 

It was from Kitty, begging her to allow Eloise 
to visit her. Kitty wrote that she had saved a little 
money during her four years of library work, and 
could pay board for Eloise and send her to school. 
She enclosed a sum of money for her traveling ex- 
penses. 

Mrs. Carew’s face worked as she read the let- 
ter. 

“I reckon I ought to let her go,” she wailed to 
herself, “but the sun just seems tO' rise and set in 
the child, and I can’t part with her just yet.” 

It was true. Like many small-souled and small- 
minded people, women especially, as she grew older 
she lost interest in life for herself, and centered all 
her affections and ambitions on the one favorite 


184 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


child. Unluckily, the affection so far outweighed 
the ambition that she could not part with her, even 
for her own good. 

When Katherine had been a baby she loved her 
with the natural maternal love; but as she grew up 
so straight of soul and gifted in intellect, she was 
both an enigma and a reproach to her mother. But 
shallow, pretty Eloise, coarse of thought and speech, 
was a slightly accented reproduction of herself, 
easily understood, and passionately loved. 

And, still as usual in such cases, the love met 
with scant return. Eloise used it to obtain indul- 
gences from her mother. When coaxing failed, as 
it sometimes did, she threatened her with exposure 
of the pension fraud. She had accidentally discov- 
ered this, and it was a whip that never failed. 

Elder Carew was so seldom at home that his 
influence counted for but little. Regarding his 
daughter as a pretty child, he was easily deceived 
by her apparent good behavior when he was about, 
a deceit aided and abetted by his wife. 

So the beautiful girl, undisciplined and unre- 
strained, drifted on to her fate. 

For her mother, having again read the letter, 
took from its envelope the bills for which she had 
exchanged the money order it had contained, put 
them with the others in a package securely pinned 
in the bosom of her dress, and concealing the letter- 
in the folds of her gown, walked to the bouse, en- 
tered the kitchen, and finding no one there, lifted 


BACK IN MISSOURI 


185 


the lid from the stove and dropped the letter and 
envelope on the flame. She knew that if Eloise 
found it and read the invitation, she would insist on 
going to Boston if for nothing but the fun and 
novelty of the trip. 

The first time her daughter was out of the way, 
Mrs. Carew sat down and wrote that Eloise was 
doing real well at school, now, as there was a splen- 
did teacher ; but that she should surely go to Boston 
when the term was out, when she would be sixteen. 

She gave this letter to Jeff Thompson to post 
as he set off for town next day, and Eloise never 
knew that her sister had sent for her. 


Heri* Steinberg’s Vindication. 


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CHAPTER XX. 

It is really odd how a girl of good family, 
possessing both beauty and accomplishments, but 
whose standard for men is exacting, and who does 
not lay herself out to attract them, can sometimes 
go through life, especially in a city, without many 
captives at her chariot wheels. 

Kitty had gone back and forth to Copley Square 
every week day, had attended church regularly, lec- 
tures frequently, and concerts and plays occasionally, 
and had attained considerable literary prominence; 
and yet had met no man who had so far attracted 
her notice as to feel encouraged to pay her marked 
attention. She had been quite happy and content 
without, perhaps because her mind still rested on 
Herr Steinberg, as she neared the end of her 
third decade, a restlessness began to work within 
her, and the dead level of the last few years began 
slightly to pall. 

Though there was not the slightest trace of 
snobbery about Pearl, the entrance of Kitty into 
business life necessarily curtailed much of their in- 
timacy. The small fragments of Miss Dudley’s 
time that were not occupied by that endless social 
whirl, which forces people entirely in or entirely 
out of its sweep, were given to keeping up her music. 

188 


HERR STEINBERG’S VINDICATION 189 


Kitty never knew when her friend would be dis- 
engaged, so that it got to be an understood thing 
that Pearl should do most of the visiting. Once in 
every month or two she would break away from her 
social engagements to spend an evening with Kitty. 
She came in the carriage, sending it away with 
orders to return for her at eleven o’clock. 

“I could never understand, Kitty,” she said on 
one such occasion, as they sat buried in two sleepy 
hollows of easy chairs in Kitty’s own room at the 
rectory, where she had become such a favorite as 
to be considered nearly one of the family ; “I never 
could understand how you could make so long a 
stay in Europe and not visit Heidelberg.” 

“Nor I either,” laughed Kitty, “except that 
Aunt Anne never seemed ready to go there. It really 
seemed as if she had a positive intention to put me 
off.” 

“Well, you missed one of the most interesting 
places in Europe,” said Pearl. “Indeed, it is the 
most beautiful, to my mind, of them all. Did I ever 
tell you about the evening we went to see the il- 
lumination of the Castle?” 

“No,” answered Kitty, taking another bon-bon 
from the box which she had provided, remembering 
Pearl’s fondness for sweets. “I should like to hear 
about it.” 

“You remember our Herr Steinberg? He quite 
distinguished himself that night,” began Pearl. 

“Of course I remember him very well. Did 


190 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


you see much of him?” answered Kitty, as Pearl 
paused and seemed to expect some remark. She 
tried hard to make her voice seem perfectly easy, 
but something in its quality struck Pearl and re- 
minded her of her old fancy that Kitty was inter- 
ested in the Professor. 

“Not a great deal. Scarcely at all up to the 
evening of the illumination. Naturally, we were in 
different parts of the town. Students can live quite 
cheaply in Heidelberg and he evidently did so,” and 
again she paused. 

“But about the Castle?” reminded Kitty. “And 
how did der Herr Professor distinguish himself?” 

“Yes, I am coming to it, but it would seem by 
a most roundabout road. On the evening of the 
illumination some German friends called in their car- 
riage for auntie and me. To get the best view of 
the illumination we had to cross the Neckar and 
drive up the river road till we were directly opposite 
the Castle. This road was crowded with humanity, 
on foot and in carriages. The night was a soft, 
dark, moonless one, and the driving had to be very 
skillfully done to prevent accident. However, our 
friends’ horses were a trusted pair that had been 
owned by them for some years, and their coachman 
was an old family servant, so we had no thought 
of danger even in that closely packed mass — aher, 
Donnenvetter! as the Herr Professor would say, 
I’ve begun at the wrong end of my story ! I should 


HERR STEINBERG’S VINDICATION 191 


have told about the dueling first, or rather about 
his objections to duels.” 

Kitty laughed. 

“Has your tongue forgot its cunning? You 
used to be a splendid story teller. Don’t you remem^ 
ber how you used to enthrall groups of us at school ? 
Now I never could tell a story.” 

“Yes, my thoughts run right up to my tongue 
and spill off its tip, and yours run down your arm 
to your fingers and flow off your pen. But about 
the duels. I forgot to mention in the beginning 
that Herr Steinberg is very much opposed to the 
German university custom of dueling. He did 
not belong to any of the corps, so was not obliged 
to take part in any of the fights. But on one occa- 
sion an intoxicated student grossly insulted him, 
and in such cases the offended man is expected to 
challenge the aggressor, and the pair borrow the 
swords and paraphernalia of the corps, and fight. 
This, Herr Steinberg refused to do, saying that dur- 
ing his residence in America he had fallen out of 
sympathy with the idea of dueling, and that the 
thought of killing or maiming a fellow creature was 
repulsive to him. Neither did he relish the prospect 
of being disfigured for life himself. It must have 
taken great moral courage to take such a stand in 
a German university town, where the custom has 
been rooted for centuries.” 

“Yes, indeed,” interrupted Kitty; “I think it 
must indeed have called for a large amount of that 


192 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


virtue, but I can easily fancy Herr Steinberg possess- 
ing it.” 

“And yet,” she w^ent on with some hesitation, 
as* if fearing to advance an idea with which her 
friend would not agree, while her honest nature 
forced her to speak as she felt, “and yet I don’t 
know but I should have admired him more if he 
had made the challenge.” 

The rebuke came promptly. 

“Why Katherine Cresap! What a dreadful 
idea for one so gentle as you. I think the moral 
courage of the refusal to follow a pernicious cus- 
tom far finer than the physical courage required 
to fight a duel. Besides, Herr Steinberg’s life is 
too valuable to science to be risked so recklessly,” 
she added, a little primly, for her. 

'‘Peccavi!” assented Kitty, “I think so, too. 
But the trouble is I can’t feel so about it. It is 
dreadfully wrong-headed — no, wrong-hearted, I 
know.” 

“Well, since an American woman can feel so 
about it I don’t wonder it was misinterpreted over 
there,” said Pearl with severity. “The other young 
men thought it cowardice, and I gathered that Herr 
Steinberg was ostracized to a considerable extent, 
which must have been galling to his proud nature. 

“Well, as I said, we had driven to a point op- 
posite the Castle and were wedged in among a mass 
of other vehicles waiting for the illumination to 
begin. We had sat there in the carriage for a long 


HERR STEINBERG’S VINDICATION 193 


time when suddenly, with a loud noise, the Castle 
belched forth a shower of rockets from every tower 
and turret, rendering all the country about as light 
as day. The horses were perhaps restive from 
standing so long, and immediately began to plunge. 
Our coachman’s eyes and attention had been fixed 
on the display, and in hastily gathering up the lines 
he dropped one. Ladies screamed, other horses be- 
came frightened, and an accident seemed inevitable 
when a man sprang through the crowd and leaped 
to the horses’ heads, grasping each by the bit. In 
all the terror and confusion I thought there was 
something familiar in his appearance. He held on, 
though the horses reared till they dragged him off 
his feet. Other men sprang to his assistance, and 
soon the horses were under control. We asked for 
our preserver and were told that he had tried to 
get away, but had fainted. We had him brought 
to our carriage, and then it was that I recognized, 
through the blood that flowed over his face from 
a cut on the head, our Herr Professor. 

^^No doctor seemed available in the crowd about 
us, and so three of us crowded into one seat, and 
Herr Steinberg was put into the carriage and sup- 
ported by my aunt while we drove as hastily as 
we could through the mass of carriages and pe- 
destrians back to the city. 

‘‘Not knowing his lodgings. Auntie had him 
taken to ours, and we waited anxiously, you may 
be sure, for the arrival of the doctor, as our hero 


194 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


was still not entirely conscious. When the physi- 
cian came he soon restored him to his faculties, 
and after an examination pronounced his hurts not 
dangerous, as far as he could determine. The 
most serious ones were a bad wrench of the shoulder 
joint and a blow on the head, which last had caused 
the fainting. The Herr Professor wanted to go 
to his own lodging, but on attempting to rise nearly 
fainted again from the weakness consequent on the 
loss of blood. Auntie set her foot down then, and 
ordered a couch improvised in our sitting-room, 
and the doctor promised to send a nurse immediately. 
We did not retire till this nurse came and was in- 
stalled by his patient’s side. 

‘The next day Herr Steinberg was much 
stronger, though feverish and sore, his shoulder 
being particularly painful. He insisted on being 
removed to his lodgings, but Auntie took pains to 
keep herself informed as to his welfare until he 
was entirely recovered, and I, feeling how unjustly 
hiS' bravery had been called into question, took 
care that an account of the affair should appear 
in the papers, contrasting the heroism of risking 
one’s life to save others with the recklessness of 
doing so out of bravado, and Herr Steinberg was 
made quite a lion.” 

“I am glad you saw justice done him,” said 
Kitty. “You missed the greater part of the illumi- 
nation, then?” 

“Yes, for that occasion. But we had another 


HERR STEINBERG’S VINDICATION 195 


chance to observe it when it was said to be even 
finer. It is a most beautiful sight. After a great 
display of fireworks the whole Castle is wrapped 
in swaying mists of Greek fire of different hues, 
and of combinations of colors. The place is splen- 
did by daylight, too, but in its palmiest days it 
could not have been much more impressive than 
is the Steinberg estate on the Rhine. It was hor- 
ribly snobbish of me, of course, but there was al- 
ways a trace of pity in my respect for the Herr 
Professor till I saw his ancestral home. It was 
a goodly castle when my forbears and yours lived 
in the cabins of the early Colonial settlers, and 
each Baron von Steinberg has added to the build- 
ings or adorned the interior till it is indeed a stately 
pile. And there is plenty of revenue to keep up 
the estate and a befitting style of living. The 
Steinberg fortune is one of the largest in Ger- 
many.” 

“Indeed,” said Kitty, “you must have been 
studying the Court guide or its equivalent. How 
far removed is our friend from the barony?” 

“His uncle is the present baron. He has a 
married son who has also an infant heir. Then 
Herr Steinberg himself has an older brother.” 

“Then he is quite distant from the title,” said 
Kitty. “But hark! Is it storming? I think I 
hear sleet rattling against the panes.” 

They went to a window, and Kitty lifted the 
draperies that they might look out into the street. 


196 THE CRESAP PENSION 


“Why/’ said Pearl, “there is our carriage. I 
did not know it was so late !” 

Just then a second carriage drew up to the 
curb beside the first. 

“And that is Aunt Anne’s, surely!” exclaimed 
Kitty. “Yes, it is, for there is Silas, her coach- 
man, on the box. And that gentleman getting out 
is Mr. Renfrow, her lawyer. What can it mean? 
I am afraid something is wrong at Aunt Anne’s.” 

“Don’t be frightened,” said Pearl, putting her 
arm around her friend caressingly, “I dare say it 
is nothing serious.” 

As she spoke footsteps were heard approaching 
through the hall, and Kitty threw open the door. 
Mrs. Courtney came in, looking very grave. 

“Your aunt is quite ill, Kitty, and has sent 
for you,” she said. “Mr. Renfrow hopes it is 
nothing more than one of the attacks to which she 
has lately been subject. Let us help you with your 
dress and wraps, and Mr. Courtney will accompany 
you.” 


The Death of Mrs. De Witt. 



CHAPTER XXL 


Mrs. De Witt lay on her death bed. In the 
room were several old and trusted servants, a pro- 
fessional nurse, and her doctor. 

The dying woman’s eyes were wild and roved 
constantly about the room. Now they fixed on 
the doctor, and with her last remnant of strength 
she rose on her elbow and glared at him. 

“Horrible?” she said in a sibilant, penetrating 
monotone. “Perhaps it is horrible, but I have lived 
among such horrors all my life. You and your 
friends know it, father, and you know that we know 
it, too. Thousands of children are born their fa- 
ther’s slaves! Look at Dan and Rose and Sue! 
Don’t I know they are my half-sisters and my half- 
brother? Deny it before Heaven if you dare! And 
it is winked at and glossed over ! Why should you 
rage so if for one single time the shoe gets on the 
other foot?” 

She stopped and seemed to listen, and then to 
answer. 

“Not mention Heaven in the same breath with 
such things ? Oh no, they are not to be spoken of, 
they are only to be done! Which is the worse, to 
speak of crimes before God’s throne, or to do them 
on His footstool?” 


199 


200 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


Again she stopped as if to listen, and again 
she made answer. 

^‘Our old and honored name? Well, the name 
that is rightfully his is more old and honored still! 
He can trace his lineage back to the Saxons, and 
we only to the Normans. Why, he looks like a 
Saxon prince, with his tall figure and fair hair!” 

She fell back exhausted and for a moment 
lay quiet with closed eyes. Then they opened with 
startling suddenness, and leaning forward she 
seemed to peer at something as if through dark- 
ness, and she whispered softly : 

“Is that you, Ralph? Dear little brother, you 
always loved me. Tell me truly, Ralph, did Pierre 
get away safely?’' 

This time she listened breathlessly for the re- 
ply, a look of intense relief appearing on her face 
as she did so. 

“Thank God,” she murmured, “if such as I 
may thank Him. I see the evening star through a 
clink in the logs, Ralph. When you see it after 
this think of poor sister Nell, for I may never see 
you again, Ralph. I suppose they mean to keep 
me here till I die. Hush, don’t cry. Go to the 
house and don’t tell anyone, not even mammy, 
that you spoke to me, or know that I am here. They 
might whip you. Quick! I am afraid some one 
is coming!” 

After a few minutes’ quiet she turned on the 
nurse. 


THE DEATH OF MRS. DeWITT 


201 


“What have you done with my baby?” she de- 
manded fiercely. But her wandering gaze soon 
turned from her, and she again spoke to the empty 
seeming air. 

“Yes, my poor boy,” she said, with a tender- 
ness in her tone not heard before, “that will be best. 
We will leave all these terrors behind us, and in 
sunny France try to forget them. You speak 
French so perfectly you can easily pass for a French- 
man, in spite of your fair hair and blue eyes.” 

After this she sank back and seemed to doze. 

“The opiate is taking effect,” whispered the 
nurse to the doctor. 

“I am pleased that it is,” returned the doctor. 
“It is unpleasant to listen to her ravings. There is 
some dark and awful family secret here! I trust 
it may die with her.” 

Guarded footfalls were heard in the hall. The 
door softly opened and Mr. Renfrow, followed 
by Kitty and Mr. Courtney, came into the room. 
The dying woman stirred restlessly and opened her 
eyes. The light of reason was in them now. 

“Kitty,” she said feebly, “Ralph’s little Kitty! 
Kiss me.” 

To the day of her death Katherine Cresap re- 
proached herself for the feeling of repulsion which 
she fought down as she bent to kiss her aunt. 

Mrs. De Witt never spoke again. After greet- 
ing Kitty she sank into unconsciousness, and as the 
gray winter dawn broke she died. 



The St. Loui$ Drummer* 



CHAPTER XXIL 


“Ma, just look at that man ! I reckon he’s dead 
gone on me, the way he sl;ares. Maybe he’s the 
city chap we’ve been waiting for,” whispered Eloise 
Carew, nudging her mother. 

They were standing at the dry goods counter 
of the principal store in Byson. By the desk at 
the further end of the store stood a young man 
displaying the contents of his sample case to the 
proprietor. 

A clerk returned from half way down the store 
with the roll of goods they had asked to see. 

'‘See that St. Louis drummer down there?” he 
said as he unrolled the goods. “Well, he’s a slick 
one. Bet he lets the old man in for a big bill of 
goods.” 

“Right good looking kind of fellow,” com- 
mented Mrs. Carew. 

“All the ladies sure think so,” laughed the clerk. 
“Regular heart smasher. Us country boys never 
do have no chance when them St. Louis drummers 
are around.” 

“They make good money, don’t they?” asked 
Mrs. Carew. 

“The good sellers do. This one says he don’t 
have to travel. Just does it for fun, and to put 

205 


206 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


in the time till his rich old uncle dies and leaves 
him all his money. 

Eloise nudged her mother again, and the two 
managed to take so much time to make their pur- 
chases that the traveling man had completed his 
sales and strolled up to the front of the store, while 
they were discussing the relative merits of two 
pieces of goods. 

The knight of the grip made a signal to the 
clerk as he neared them, and as he came up the 
clerk said : 

‘T think this piece is the best bargain, don’t 
you, Mr. Marvin?” 

“You’re right, it is, Reynolds,” heartily agreed 
the drummer. “That goods is all wool and a yard 
wide. All the ladies are wearing it in the city,” 
he added. 

“Miss Carew, let me make you acquainted with 
Mr. Marvin,” said the clerk. “Also Mrs. Carew, 
Mr. Marvin.” 

Reynolds was not versed in social conventions, 
and the extraordinary form of this introduction was 
the logical outcome of his estimate of the relative 
value of the two. That the mother was of more 
social importance than the daughter was an idea 
which had simply never entered his unsophisticated 
mind. 

Mr. Marvin was effusive in his response to 
the introduction, and worked hard at making him- 
self agreeable. He succeeded to such an extent that 


THE ST. LOUIS DRUMMER 


207 


he was accorded the privilege of escorting them to 
their wagon, which vehicle was still their means of 
travel. Here he seemed to be in danger of losing 
them till a happy thought struck him. He inquired 
if they had dined. 

“No,” Mrs. Carew answered, “we brought a 
snack to eat on the way home.” 

Mr. Marvin would not hear of this. 

“Take pity on me, ladies,” he begged per- 
suasively, “and come and liven up my bachelor din- 
ner at the hotel.” And this he finally prevailed on 
them to do; the word bachelor catching the instant 
attention of Eloise, and the idea of getting dinner 
without pay proving enticing to Mrs. Carew’s 
avaricious mind. 

Byson had no railroad, but it had a hotel 
famous for its good meals, over whose cooking pre- 
sided a reduced Southern gentlewoman, aided by 
an old time colored cook known far and wide as 
Aunt Psyche. 

Mrs. Carew enjoyed the dinner, Eloise enjoyed 
the dinner and the somewhat overdone attentions 
of her escort. The child thought she had reached 
the acme of style in dining at a “hotel in town.” 
Fred Marvin enjoyed the dinner, the girl’s pretti- 
ness, and the envious looks bestowed on him by 
some other voting men in the dining room, among 
whom was Tom Leslie. 

While he was helping them into the wagon he 
discovered that his next day’s business would take 


208 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


him across the country in the direction of their 
home, and he asked permission to call, which was 
readily granted. 

The wagon had not gone far on its homeward 
way when its occupants heard the thud of horses’ 
hoofs in a swift gallop behind them, and a party of 
young men of their own neighborhood overtook 
them. One stopped his horse beside the wagon, 
while the rest rode on with a ringing whoop, and 
were presently heard breaking out into “The girl 
I left behind me.” 

“I say, Ellie,” said Tom Leslie, “will you go 
with me to the party over to Lige’s place tomorrow 
night?” 

Eloise made a quick calculation. Mr. Marvin 
might stay into the evening. 

“I don’t know,” she said, considering. “Fact 
is, I don’t feel very well, Tom. Reckon I’d better 
stay at home, hadn’t I, ma?” signaling Mrs. Carew 
to agree with her by pinching her arm under her 
shawl. 

“You sure will if I know anything about it,” 
her mother said. “Fd a heap rather you’d keep 
away from our place, anyway, Tom Leslie. You 
know that, I reckon.” 

“Reckon I sure do. But if you think I am 
going to stand round and see that city dude carry 
Ellie off, you’re mistook.” 

“Like to know how you ’low to help yourself, 


THE ST. LOUIS DRUMMER 


209 


if she wants to go. You ain’t her boss, Tom Leslie,” 
answered Mrs. Carew. 

“ ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way’ ; and 
‘All’s fair in love and war,’ retorted the youth. 

“Threatening’s easy, ’specially two lone women 
that hain’t got no men folks about,” answered Mrs. 
Carew. 

“That’s just it, Mrs. Carew,” said Tom, ear- 
nestly, riding up close to the wagon wheel as he 
spoke. “Now I mean well by Elbe. Pa has a good 
farm, and I’m to have it after him, and Elbe might 
do worse. Who knows what that fellow means? 
Them drummers think country girls are just made 
to play with! Not all of ’em, maybe, but a good 
many. And I don’t like the looks of this one.” 

“Who cares if you don’t? I reckon Elder 
Carew’s daughter is good enough for any city man, 
Tom Leslie. It’s you that’s insulting her, insinuat- 
ing she ain’t.” 

“I didn’t say she wasn’t. Elbe is good enough 
for anybody,” declared the lad, loyally, “but it ain’t 
what I think that counts, nohow. It’s what I know 
he’s thinking.” 

“Mr. Marvin is a gentleman,” said Mrs. Carew 
with dignity. It is easy to believe that which one 
wishes to believe, and Mrs. Carew was quite con- 
vinced. “It’s only your low down jealousy, Tom 
Leslie, that makes you go round slurring your bet- 
ters behind their backs. Now you go ’long and 


210 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


’tend to your own business if you’ve got any. And 
let ourn alone, if you hain’t!” 

And Mrs. Carew drove off at a brisk trot, that 
made the wagon, old and rickety, bounce over the 
boulder strewn Ozark road till its rattle drowned 
Tom’s reply, if he made any. 


Mrs. Carew Writes a Letter 



I- 




CHAPTER XXIIL 


Mrs. Carew was writing a letter. Outside the 
sun shone, the bees hummed, the butterflies hung 
over the few bunches of clover left from Captain 
Cresap’s time. Inside, the house was painfully still. 
The ticking of the clock could be heard all over it. 

It was the longest letter Susan Carew had ever 
written. The unaccustomed task was hard enough 
at best. Many women of her generation, among the 
poorer classes of Southwest Missouri, could neither 
read nor write. Susan’s father had been somewhat 
above his neighbors. At one time he had owned 
four slaves, and he had managed to give this, his 
only daughter, some education. 

But still writing a letter was a most laborious 
task. Her hands trembled with the nervous tension 
of the effort and the pain of the news she was tell- 
ing. Her face was red and swollen with much 
weeping, and nothing remained of the fresh youth- 
ful beauty that had lured young Ralph Cresap to 
trust its promise of heart and soul behind it, to his 
bitter disappointment; or even of the matronly 
comeliness that had taken the eye of good Elder 
Carew, and which caused him to buffer, to the rela- 
tive extent of his nature, the same trial. 

She wrote slowly for some time, and then 

213 


214 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


threw down the pen and burst into tears. After 
some minutes of hysterical weeping she rose, and, 
going into the kitchen, filled the tin wash basin by 
means of a gourd dipper that floated in the water 
bucket, laved her face, dried it on the coarse roller 
towel, and essayed her task again, to be presently 
overtaken by a fresh burst of sobs. This alternate 
process was repeated until the letter was finally 
finished, and she read it in a low monotone from 
beginning to end. With some oddities in spelling 
and punctuation, that might obscure the meaning, 
corrected, it ran: 

Dear Daughter Kitty: 

I take my pen in hand to tell you I am poorly, 
and in a peck of trouble. Seems like I have more’n 
my share of trouble, and I don't see what I done 
to deserve it. First there was your father took, and 
then when I had got a good husband again, he has 
went, too. Yes, Elder Carew died of typhoid three 
months and two weeks ago. He was sick a long 
spell, and me and Elbe was nigh tuckered out nurs- 
ing him, and now she’s gone, too. I don’t mean 
she’s dead, but I reckon she’d better a been. 

I never happened to tell you, but while you 
was over in Europe we lost a pair of twin boys. 
They was six months and three days old, and they 
was awful cute. It nearly broke your step-pa’'s 
heart. Seems like he never has had no spirits since. 

And it would have finished him sure if he had 


MRS. CAREW WRITES A LETTER 215 


lived to see what EHie’s gone and done. As I was 
telling you, she has run away. 

A spell ago, ’bout six months before her pa 
died, me and Ellie got acquainted with one of them 
St. Louis drummers, over to Byson. We thought 
he was a mighty slick fellow. Had big black eyes 
and a black mustache, and I reckon he’s got a black 
heart, too, for he tolled my little girl off with him. 

He kept a-coming and a-coming here, and at 
first I was mighty pleased with him. Elbe was aw- 
ful pretty and good enough for anybody’s folks, 
and I never thought but he wanted to marry her, 
and take her to his grand house in St. Louis that 
he was always bragging about. But pretty soon 
they got to going out buggy riding a heap, and stay- 
ing out till after candle light, and I seen some other 
things I didn’t like the looks of, and I tried to pul 
a stop to it, but you might as well try to stop the 
wind. I couldn’t do a thing with Ellie. She would 
fool me, like telling me they was going to a party 
somewheres, and then they would ride around half 
the night and never go near no party, and I found 
it out. Tom Leslie com.e and told me, and I jawed 
her for deceiving me, and she flew up and got sassy, 
and said, “Who learned me deceit, I should like to 
know? You jawing about lying! Why, you’d tell 
a lie yourself when the truth would serve your turn 
better. You write a lie every draw day that would 
send you to prison if it was found out. I am as 
good as my raising, I reckon.” 


216 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


Did you ever hear the beat of that for ungrate- 
fulness when Pd spent nearly every cent of the pen- 
sion money on her? Well, then I spoke to him 
about it, and he just laughed in my face and said : 

“Now you just keep a civil tongue in your head, 
old lady, if you want to keep out of the federal 
prison !” 

Elbe had went and told him all about the pen- 
sion ! I don’t see how she does come to be so bad, 
the way she’s been raised. 

Night before last they went buggy riding, and 
they never come back. I nearly went crazy when 
it got to be after midnight and not a hide nor 
hair of them around. It was worse’n the night 
your pa was took sick. I never went to bed at all, 
and before good daylight I went over to the cabin 
and woke up Jeff Thompson, and Jane she got him 
a snack while he hitched up, and by sun up we was 
on the road to Byson, for I knowed the buggy come 
from there, from a livery stable. 

When we got to Byson the livery keeper said 
that Marvin, that was the drummer’s name, had 
called at the stable in the night and got fresh horses 
and a driver to carry him over to Lebanon to ketch 
the early morning Frisco there. He said Marvin 
was alone when he drove away from the stable, but 
maybe he had the girl waiting for him somewheres. 
The driver hadn’t come back yet. 

Well, I thought I would go on to the railroad 
and see if I could come up with them, but when 


MRS. CREW WRITES A LETTER 217 


I went to look in the bag I carry my money in, I 
swan if that girl hadn’t took out the bills and put 
some pieces of paper in their places. I don’t know 
when she done it, for I had never untied the bundle 
of late, but I was in a pretty fix. I never looked 
at the money till I got to the depot at Lebanon, and 
went to pay the driver, so he could take the team 
back, and I hadn’t a thing to pay him or to go on 
with, so I had to go back to Byson with the driver. 
The livery keeper was sorry for me, and let one of 
his men take me home, and said he wouldn’t charge 
me a cent. Jeff Thompson had gone on home, for 
I thought I was going on to St. Louis. I never got 
home till one o’clock last night and I am plum played 
out, riding so fur, and doing without sleeping and 
eating. 

When we got back to the livery stable at By* 
son the other driver had got back. He had took 
a fork in the road and we missed him. He said 
Marvin and Elbe had got on the train for St. Louis, 
sure enough. 

So I reckon they are there. Go and get her, 
Kitty, and bring her home, if it takes the farm to 
pay for it. If you will, I will stop the pension and 
sell the farm, and me and Elbe will come to Boston 
and live with you. Hoping you are well and 
happy, this is from your affectionate Mother, 

Susan Carew. 

P. S. — Tom Leslie, him that I told you wanted 
Elbe so bad, was here early this morning, and he 


218 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


said he was going to St. Louis after them. He 
showed me his pistol and said he was going to fill 
that drummer so full of shot he would weigh heavy. 
Said he had made some shot cartridges, ’cause he 
wanted him to die slow. I asked him to make Mar- 
vin marry Ellie first, if he hadn’t. He said he 
would, but he was going to kill him anyhow. I 
don’t care if he does, if he hasn’t married her. Go 
and see about it as quick as you can, and the Lord 
will bless you. From your poor old mother, 

Susan Carev/. 

Having finished reading the letter she put it 
in an envelope, addressed and stamped it, and car- 
ried it out to Jeff Thompson, who had been wait- 
ing with horse saddled to take it to the nearest post- 
office. 

‘‘Lope all the way there, Jeff,” Mrs. Carew 
said, “so’s to be in plenty time for the stage, and 
see your own self that Miller puts it in the bag.” 

“I sure will, Mrs. Carew, don’t you worry,” 
said Thompson with clumsy sympathy, and rode 
away on a gallop. 

Mrs. Carew turned into her desolate house, sat 
down in the old rocking chair, and throwing her 
apron over her head, burst into a fresh torrent of 
tears of self pity. 


KalherSne Finds Eloise, 



CHAPTER XXIV. 


When Mrs. De Witt’s estate was settled a 
strange thing developed. Every vestige of her 
property, except her diamonds and furs, in them- 
selves a fortune, had been converted into cash, and 
paid into a bank in the name of Katherine Cresap. 
The diamonds were also at the bank, subject to her 
disposal, and a securely packed case containing the 
furs was found at a leading furrier’s, likewise in her 
name. Nowhere did Mrs. De Witt’s name appear. 

Those present at the death-bed never men- 
tioned its revelations, and Katherine remained ig- 
norant of them. 

Consequently she accepted the legacy grate- 
fully, as giving her an opportunity to devote her 
time to literature, to which end she resigned her 
place in the Library. 

But she resolved that, before settling down, she 
would visit her mother and sister, and if posible, 
bring Eloise east and educate her. On the eve of 
her departure for Missouri she received her mother’s 
letter. With whirling brain and aching heart she 
caught the first train for the west. 

5 |{ * * * * 5 |« ♦ 

A well dressed young man was examining, with 
great apparent interest, the register of a third rate 
hotel in St. Louis. 


221 


222 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“Well, that does beat the Dutch!” he solilo- 
quized. “Fm dead sure I saw them come in here.” 

He looked over the arrivals of several days and 
lingered over one dated more than a week back. 
It read, “T. B. Jones and wife.” 

“That looks like his hand-write,” he said to 
himself, and then he turned to the clerk. 

“Say,” he said, “what for a looking man is 
this T. B. Jones?” 

“He’s a youngish man with dark eyes and mus- 
tache. Came here from the Hotel Savoy. His 
young wife is a mighty good looker. One of those 
blondes, you know. Do you know them?” 

“I know him slightly,” answered the other, be- 
ginning to close the book, after making a mental 
note of the room number. 

“Here, don’t do that I” called the clerk. “That 
register don’t close till it’s full.” 

“Beg pardon,” answered the other, “I forgot 
you fellow s notion about that,” and he strolled from 
the office. 

In the hall he paused. 

“By Jove, but Marvin’s flying high. By and 
by he’ll light, if he don’t watch out. Reckon I’ll 
clip his wings a little myself, if he don’t agree to 
my plans,” he was thinking. “But the girl’s a 
beauty I Must have lost his head or he wouldn’t 
have run such a risk when there’s so much travel 
between here and St. Joe. Wouldn’t old Spicer 
buzz?” 


KATHERINE FINDS ELOISE 


223 


He ascended the stairs and began looking for 
the room whose number he had noted. He did not 
care to call in the assistance of the bell boy. At 
last he found a door with the number he sought, and 
knocked. 

There was a quick scurry within the room, and 
then the door opened and Marvin stood in the door- 
way. 

“Hello, Edgar,” said the stranger, airily. ‘T 
saw you come in here after the show last night, and 
thought I would call.” 

“Why the devil didn’t you send for me to come 
to the parlor then, instead of poking your nose in 
here, Fred Hunter?” demanded Marvin, with 
flushed face. 

“Oh, I wanted to pay my respects to Mrs. Mar- 
vin, too. I saw you had a lady with you last night. 
Of course, it was her.” 

“No, it wasn’t. And if it was all the more rea- 
son you should have sent from the parlor. My wife 
don’t entertain company in a hotel room. You 
know that, and you know that she wouldn’t go to 
no such show as that was last night. Fact is,” and 
he lowered his voice to a confidential pitch, and 
made a mighty effort to smooth his ruffled temper, 
“it was one of the dining room girls, but don’t squeal 
on her. It might lose the poor thing her job. I’ll 
come out in the hall and tell you all about it.” 

But Fred Hunter pushed past him into the 
room. 


224 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“Halls ain’t no place to talk secrets,” he said, 
glancing at a pair of small slippers peeping from 
under a chair. “Whew, it’s hot in here! Guess 
I’ll open this door.” 

Before the other could prevent he threw open 
a closet door. In it, standing with her face to the 
wall, cowered Eloise Carew. 

“Damn you!” shouted Marvin, “what business 
have you to interfere in my affairs?” 

He started toward the other man with clenched 
fist, but Hunter caught both his arms in an iron 
grip. He was much the taller and stronger of the 
two. 

“Hear reason, now, Marvin, or your rich old 
father-in-law in vSt. Joe will hear facts,” he said. 
“Cool down, I don’t mean any harm if you are 
sensible.” 

“What the devil is your game?” asked Marvin 
sullenly, but with an evident gleam of hope. 
“Money?” 

“Not on your life ” began Hunter, but jusi 

then Eloise, with a white face, burst from the 
closet, and grasped Marvin’s arm. 

“What does he mean by your father-in-law?” 
she gasped. “Are you married already, Edgar? Is 
that why you kept putting me off?” 

“Yes, he’s married all right, my little lady, bur 
don’t you worry your pretty head. There are a^ 
good fish in the sea as ever were caught,” Huntei 
answered for him with a leer. 


KATHERINE FINDS ELOISE 


225 


'‘Answer me yourself, Ed Marvin,” demanded 
Eloise, “are you married already?” 

“Yes, Ellie. I have been married for two 
years. But don’t worry. I’ll provide for you.” 

Eloise sank into a chair, leaving the two men 
facing each other. 

There are men and men. There are men with 
big hearts and big brains, bless them! There are 
men with big hearts, and little brains; they, too, 
are good. There are men with little hearts and big 
brains; well, they are not the worst ones. Then 
there are men with little hearts and little brains ; and 
these are the cruel men, because they have neither 
mind to comprehend suffering, or soul to feel it. 
To this class belonged Edgar Marvin and Fred 
Hunter. 

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” 
asked Marvin, still sullen. 

“Well, there are no strings on me, and I’ll 
tell you what I’ll do. I am going to Chicago today 
on business that will take me a month, maybe two, 
and I’m afraid I’ll get lonesome,” with a wink meant 
to be sly. “Now, I’ll just take this pretty piece of 
calico off your hands and take it with me, and mum’s 
the word. Always willing to inconvenience myself 
to help a friend out of trouble, you know,” with 
another wink. 

Marvin looked immensely relieved. He had 
been afraid Hunter would demand money despite his 
denial of such intention, and money he had not. But 


226 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


the girl — why, it was just the relief for a situation 
getting irksome. His fancy, easily inflamed and 
quickly burned out, as is common with weak men, 
was tired of her. Her importunity to have the 
marriage ceremony performed was irritating. Her 
temper was trying, too, and her reproaches unbear- 
able. Who was she, he thought, to be squeamish? 
Had he not taken her out of the backwoods and 
shown her something of life? She had told him 
her mother had abused and half starved her; she 
ought to be glad to get anything. She had de- 
ceived her mother and would probably deceive any 
other protector. She might as well go to the devil 
now as later. Anyhow, he had no more money 
to spend on her, and his business demanded his 
presence back on the road. And then his wife was 
getting impatient for a visit. It would never do 
to offend her. Her rich old father, whose heiress 
she was, had never liked him, and would be only 
too glad to help his daughter get a divorce. This 
girl would be lost in the slums of Chicago, and 
never get back to bother him. But he must not 
seem too eager. 

“Well, of course, I don’t like to part with her,” 
he said, “but I know you are a man of your word. 
Hunter, and I’m treed and might as well come 
down. You may take her.” 

When Eloise had sunk into the chair she had 
begun to cry. But as neither man took the slight- 
est notice of her grief, she stopped weeping to 


KATHERINE FINDS ELOISE 


227 


listen. Now she sprang up and moved toward Mar- 
vin with a face to which womanly resentment gave 
dignity. She clasped her hands about his arm, and 
if in her words there was any imitation of her novel 
heroines it was quite unconscious. 

“O Edgar! Edgar! Unsay that quick! You 
cannot mean it. You could not so degrade my 
love!” 

“Oh, come now, Ellie, don’t call it love, you 
know. Be reasonable, that’s a sensible girl. Fred 
isn’t a bad sort. He’ll do the square thing by you.” 

“You just bet your sweet life,” Hunter broke 
in. “I’ll take you to Chicago, Ellie, and show you 
a good time, and give you scads of clothes and 
jewelry, and when you get tired you can go home 
with your trunk full of frills, and say you have 
been visiting some rich relations. If you haven’t 
got any, you can invent some, you know.” 

“She won’t have to do that. You can say you 
have been visiting that rich sister of yours in the 
‘Hub,’ Ellie,” said Marvin. 

Eloise looked from one to the other of the 
two men, and it was an awful sight to see the out- 
raged womanhood working in the childish features. 
Suddenly a curious quiver passed over her face, 
and it set in a resolve. 

She had remembered something that lay in the 
upper drawer of the bureau, something Tom Eeslie 
had given her and taught her to use. 


228 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“All right,” she said. “I reckon it don’t make 
no difference what becomes of me, now. Did you 
say you are going today?” turning to Hunter. 

“Yes, at II :45, and it’s past ten now. I’ll go 
over to my hotel and put my traps together, and 
bring a cab for you in less than an hour. Remem- 
ber, no tricks, either of you!” and he looked sig- 
nificantly at Marvin as he left the room. Having 
gained his point, he was rather glad to miss the 
next half hour. 

As the door closed Eloise turned to Marvin 
with a curious likeness in her manner to a judge 
who asks a prisoner if he has anything to say before 
being sentenced. 

“Ed, do you really mean to send me away, or 
did you say that just to get rid of him?” 

“Why, yes, Ellie, I think it is the best thing 
you can do. Fact is, my money’s given out, and I 
can’t pay any more board for you. Pie’ll be 
mighty good to you, and you can have a fly time, 
and then go home, like he said,” he answered per- 
suasively. 

She put her hands up on his shoulders. 

“Don’t you care?” she said, looking up plead- 
ingly in his face. “Do you love your wife better 
than me?” 

“See here,” he said roughly, “don’t you men- 
tion my wife. She is a decent woman!” and he 
twitched his shoulders to loosen her hands. 


KATHERINE FINDS ELOISE 


229 


A kind word might have shaken Ellie’s pur- 
pose. That last sentence clinched it. 

Her hands dropped from his shoulders. He 
walked over to a window and stood moodily look- 
ing into the street. 

She went over to the bureau standing on the 
opposite side of the room and opened the upper 
drawer. Pushing aside some cheap ribbons and 
laces her fingers closed over something cold and 
shining, and she wheeled around. In her hand was 
the pistol Tom Leslie had given her. 

“Look here!” she said. 

He turned quickly at the sharp command, and 
a sudden horror transfixed his face. The pistol 
was already leveled, and as he started toward her 
she fired. He fell heavily forward. 

She ran to the door and turned the key, and 
then knelt by him and turned the body face up- 
ward. That awful look of mortal terror was hard- 
ening on it, and the light smoking jacket he wore 
was crimsoning at the left side. 

Footsteps were hurrying along the corridor. 
She must be quick. She stretched out his right arm, 
and then lying down she laid her head on his shoul- 
der and brought his arm about her and held it so 
with her left hand. The other held the pistol to 
her breast. 

Those clamoring in the hall heard another shot 
just as the door burst open at the push of strong 
shoulders. An awed group gathered around the 


230 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


still forms on the floor. From the girl’s fast stiff- 
ening lips came a low murmur. 

A richly clad and beautiful young woman, fol- 
lowed by a tall young man in country dress, rushed 
forward through the powder smoke. The lady 
turned to the youth with anguished, questioning 
eyes. 

“My God, it is her!” he groaned, and covered 
his face. 

Kneeling by the dying girl the lady gathered 
her hands in hers, kissed her cheek, and then bent 
to hear the words trailing off into a broken whis- 
per. 

“I was decent, too! It was love, Edgar! I 
love you — love you — love you ” 

And so Katherine Cresap found her little sister. 


Nemesis. 














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- n 


utf-; 




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h- 




'V’v' 


- Li 




CHAPTER XXV. 


A few days later a sad little procession neared 
the Cresap farm. 

First came a closed traveling carriage in which 
Kitty sat alone. On the box outside Tom Leslie 
rode with the driver, pointing out the way. 

Then came a covered hack. A spring mat- 
tress had been placed across its seats to lessen the 
jar of the rough roads, and on it was a case con- 
taining a beautiful flower covered casket, in which 
lay the body of Eloise Carew. A third carriage, 
occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Castlemon, a clergyman 
and his wife from the nearest railway station, 
brought up the rear. 

When they arrived at the gate the three drivers 
got down and hitched their several teams to the 
fence, the hack containing the casket nearest the 
gate. The minister helped his wife from the car- 
riage, and together they went to Kitty’s and helped 
her to alight. 

The house door opened and a group of women 
supporting Mrs. Carew appeared at it. Jeff Thomp- 
son, bareheaded, came down the walk and opened 
the gate. Mr. Castlemon gave his hat to his wife, 
and the drivers laid theirs in a carriage. Then the 
six men lifted out the casket and carried it slowly 

233 


234 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


up the path. Kitty and Mrs. Castlemon leading the 
way. Mrs. Carew flung herself upon Kitty with 
an inarticulate cry. 

‘T have brought her home, mother,” Kitty said, 
and, despite herself, there was reproach in the sob- 
bing voice. 

The men set the casket down on a draped trestle 
that had been hastily prepared for it, and as Mrs. 
Carew turned and sank into a chair beside it, Kitty 
noticed, with a fresh shock, her mother’s extreme 
feebleness. She was swaying in an agony of now 
tearless grief beside the casket, and clutching at 
her throat as if choking. Kitty ran to support 
her, and one of the neighbor women brought a glass 
of water, but she motioned it away. 

All the rest of the dreary day and far into 
the night she sat there, refusing food, even when 
proffered by Kitty. But at last she fell into a half 
stupor, and was put to bed, where she seemed to 
sleep. 

On the next day they buried Eloise. Kitty had 
wished the funeral to be very quiet, but the word 
had gone abroad and the house was filled till the 
crowd overflowed into the yard. Among these 
latter the driver of Kitty’s team, who had stopped 
for tke night, having changed places with the man 
who had driven the clergyman’s carriage, was after- 
wards remembered as having gone quietly from 
group to group gathering information as to the sec- 
ond marriage of Mrs. Carew. 


NEMESIS 


235 


For a short time the casket was opened. Eloise 
lay as if asleep, only the marble paleness distinguish- 
ing death from her twin sister. The beautiful face 
lying among the roses — alas! Katherine had not 
dared order lilies — had gone back to its childish 
innocence. There was nothing in it to show that 
she had known a woman’s joy in believing herself 
beloved, or a woman’s agony at the awakening. 

Looking on it through her tears, Katherine 
gathered some small hope that the peaceful expres- 
sion of the lovely clay was surety that the soul which 
had inhabited it was being mercifully judged by 
the Christ whO' in his earth life was woman’s best 
friend, and whose immutabilty argues that He is 
still the same in Heaven. 

At last the sad and trying rites were over, and 
Eloise was left lying by her father’s side in the 
neglected country graveyard. The teams from town, 
among which was the hearse, went back, with the 
exception of the clergyman’s ; he and his wife having 
offered to stay over night. But it was later re- 
called that his driver again changed places with 
another man and himself went back to town. 

Upon learning that Mr. and Mrs. Castlemon 
had agreed to stay till the next day, the neighbors 
who had been staying in the house felt at liberty 
to return to their own homes, and night closed 
quietly down on the desolate farm-house. 

Late the next afternoon a group consisting of 
Mrs. Carew, Kitty, Tom Leslie, and the clerical 


236 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


pair were assembled in the sitting room of the home- 
stead. They were telling Mrs. Carew the particu- 
lars, so far as they knew them, of her daughter's 
death. They did not tell her of the infamous bar- 
gain to which Marvin had assented, for none of them 
knew of it. 

As a matter of fact. Hunter had happened to 
be in the office of his own hotel when the clerk re- 
ceived a telephoned account of the murder and sui- 
cide from the clerk of the other hotel, who chanced 
to be a friend. Naturally, he had turned to the by- 
standers, among whom was Hunter, and repeated 
it. No sooner had the latter heard it than he hur- 
ried off to his train, and his guilty share in the 
tragedy was never known. Consequently the provo- 
cation that was poor Eloise’s best excuse for her 
double crime was never brought forward for her de- 
fense among those who mourned her. 

But they told the stricken mother how Kitty 
had set the police force of St. Louis at work to lo- 
cate Eloise. How she had one day run across Tom 
Leslie engaged in the same search. How they had 
joined forces and were successful in tracing the lost 
girl, but were too late by a fatal five minutes. 

“O Lord !” groaned Tom Leslie, ‘T wish I had 
never give Elbe that gun ! Then I could have killed 
the devil myself, and Elbe would have gone free!” 

The good clergyman looked shocked, but Kath- 
erine stretched out her hand to Tom. She had 
grown to have a genuine regard for him during 


NEMESIS 


237 


those troubled days when they had searched St. 
Louis together. 

“Don’t reproach yourself, my friend !” she said. 
“If it had not been for that clue you unraveled we 
would not have found her so soon, if at all.” 

Tom returned the hand pressure gratefully and 
went on. 

“One thing that’s queer to me is what that 
driver I come out with wanted to ask so many fool 
questions for!” 

Mrs. Carew lifted her drooping head quickly. 

“Did he ask questions?” she said. “What was 
they about?” 

“Oh, they was just about you marrying Elder 
Carew,” returned Tom, “and I don’t see how that 
was any of his darfied business !” 

Mrs. Carew could not get any paler, but she 
began to tremble and as a knock sounded at the 
door she started and shook till all noticed her. 

“Lock the door ! Let me hide !” she gasped. 

But the door was thrown open from without. 
In the doorway stood a man in a long dark ulster. 
Behind him was another man, alsu heavily wrap- 
ped, and with his right hand in his bosom. This 
latter they recognized as the driver of whom Tom 
Tom had spoken. A covered hack was drawn up at 
the gate. 

The foremost man strode into the room and 
paused before the widow. 

“You are Susan Carew?” he asked with a ris- 


238 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


ing inflection, the stern voice softening a little as 
he looked down on the crushed creature before 
him. 

“Yes,” she whispered hoarsely. 

The man drew a paper from his pocket. In 
doing so he threw back his ulster and revealed the 
circle rimmed star of a U. S. marshal. 

“Susan Carew,” he said, “I have a warrant for 
your arrest on a charge of pension defrauding. Con- 
sider yourself my prisoner!” 


Mrs. Carew Is Saved From Prison. 









I 






CHAPTER XXVI. 


Many counties in the West build their jails 
with cells for the prisoners on the ground floor, and 
rooms for the sheriff’s family above. Others have 
the sheriff’s residence in the front, and the prisoners’ 
quarters in the rear. Some few have the county 
court house on the second floor and the jail below, 
with a separate residence for the sheriff. 

But at Monkton the court house and jail are 
two separate buildings within the enclosure in the 
center of the Square. The sheriff’s residence is 
built on the Square, facing the jail. 

When the U. S. marshal and the special pen- 
sion examiner who had caused the arrest, arrived 
in Monkton with their prisoner, she was found to 
be so weak and ill that careful nursing and medical 
aid were necessary and at Kitty’s earnest entreaty 
the sheriff agreed to let Mrs. Carew occupy a room 
in his own home, and thither she was accordingly 
taken, and a physician summoned. 

While lying ill, bail was arranged for her, Kit- 
ty’s money securing this, where, without it, it would 
probably have been impossible to save her mother 
from imprisonment in the county jail. 

But Mrs. Carew’s strength came back very 
slowly, and the time for the Springfield term of the 

241 


242 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


U. S. District Court for the Western District of 
Missouri being near at hand, it was decided to let her 
remain where she was, instead of trying her strength 
by the trip home, when she must so soon leave it 
again for the trial. 

But as the time for this drew near the vitality 
of the accused began to ebb faster. All day long 
she sat stolidly in her chair before the open fire, 
though occasionally a quick spasm of pain would 
cross her face, and her right hand would close over 
her breast. At other times she seemed to choke, and 
the hand went up to her throat, but for the most 
part she appeared to suffer little in either mind or 
body. 

As a matter of fact Susan Carew’s punishment 
for having played fast and loose with the laws of 
God, and of the best government the sun shines on, 
came, not when the U. S. marshal confronted her 
with a warrant for her arrest, but when her idolized 
daughter was carried, dead, into her home. After 
that, any blow fell on a seared heart and brain. 

It developed that the special pension examiner 
had chanced to sit in a seat directly behind Marvin 
and Eloise on the train in which they had traveled to 
St. Louis, and his attention was caught by some 
words they had dropped carrying the idea of threat- 
ening Mrs. Carew with the pension fraud if she 
proved troublesome. The examiner had lost no 
time investigating the case, which was easily done 
when once suspicion was aroused. Even this 


MRS. CAREW IS SAVED FROM PRISON 243 


knowledge, that words of her favorite child had be- 
trayed her, failed to arouse Mrs. Carew from her 
lethargy. 

So it came to pass that on the very morning, in 
late March, when they should have started for 
Springfield, Kitty came flying from her mother’s 
room, whither she had gone to assist her in dressing, 
with a terrified face, and caught the sheriff’s wife 
by an arm. " 

“Come to my mother, quickly, please,” she 
cried; “I cannot wake her!” 

They tried all the simples they knew while wait- 
ing for the hastily summoned doctor, but to no avail ; 
and then the doctor came and bade them cease. 

“She has been dead for quite an hour,” he said. 
“I have been apprehensive of just this termination. 
It is heart failure.” 

:je * * * * 

Some days later Kitty stood in the doorway of 
her childhood’s home and looked out over the scene. 
The place was hers now. Kitty had paid the full 
amount her mother had received since her second 
marriage, back to the government she had robbed; 
and the farm had fallen to Kitty as Mrs. Carew’s 
sole heiress. Kitty had even tried to pay all the 
pension money back, that her father’s often ex- 
pressed wish should be fulfilled, but this had been 
refused. 

Mrs. Carew was buried by her late husband’s 
side, and Kitty had caused a handsome monument 


244 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


to be erected that embraced the graves of the three. 
She herself intended, at life’s close, to be buried by 
the side of her own father. 

For Captain Cresap’s grave she had ordered 
a massive block of granite, one side of which bore 
words from her father’s favorite hymn : — 

“Earth has no sorrow 
That heaven cannot heal.” 

She had found a tenant for the farm whom she 
judged likely to restore the place to something ap- 
proaching its appearance in her father’s lifetime, 
and had now come back to gather up whatever she 
could find that had belonged to Captain Cresap. 
Having packed this small remnant, she went to the 
door to take a farewell look at the place before leav- 
ing for the East. 

The March day was dull and leaden. The 
snow, stained and discolored by its earthlife, lay 
in dreary patches on the muddy ground. As she 
looked forth her life seemed to pass in review be- 
fore her. The glad childish days over which 
brooded her father’s love ; her grief at his death ; 
the hopeless years between that and her hunt’s 
adoption; the busy years since, and her late be- 
reavements. Then her mind reverted to the hidden 
Cresap treasure. Where could it be ? 

Then the thought of her childhood’s playmate, 
John Raynor, came into her consciousness. Where, 




“Die du geliebt sind fortgezogen” 



MRS. CAREW IS SAVED FROM PRISON 245 


she wondered, had he drifted? Surely no one was 
ever left so alone in the world as she ! From that 
door in which she stood all those she loved had 
gone forth never to re-enter. Then a thought of 
Herr Steinberg crossed her mind, bringing with it 
the only ray of sunshine in all the dreary outlook; 
and even that brought back the poem he had once 
recited so feelingly, and the closing couplet of Heim- 
kehr drearily repeated itself in her heart, — 

'"Die du gelieht sind fortgezogen, 

Und kchren nimmer, nimmermehr !” 




Der Herr Professor Goes a-Wooing. 



CHAPTER XXVIL 

A beautiful August day shown over the Charles 
river. The sun gave the clear, bright light of late 
summer, but the cool east breeze that blew up the 
river from the bay was a foretaste of autumn. It 
fanned the cheeks of a pair of canoers who were 
placidly floating down the pretty stretch of water- 
way which the dam at Waltham makes of the back- 
water between Riverside and Auburndale. 

“When do you leave for Europe, Herr Stein- 
berg?” asked the lady. 

“I have not yet decided. How do you say it? 
It somewhat depends, Fraulein Dudley,” the man 
answered, smiling a little at the discrepancy between 
the title and the name. 

They had come out to Pearl’s Alma Mater by 
trolley, — “just like a saleslady and her young man” 
— Pearl thought gleefully in consenting to make the 
trip; and after walking about under the fine old elms 
for some time, had hired a canoe at Norumbega 
Park, and paddled up to Riverside. 

Here they found the river so densely crowded 
with boats and canoes that they turned and drifted 
back again. The canoe was a large one, and now 
the Herr shipped the paddles, and seated himself 
by Pearl’s side. 


249 


250 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“Ach! Yes, Fraulein, it very much depends. 
I have much to say, and the words come not. Aber, 
by whom sit you, Fraulein” 

Pearl lifted her hand from its trailing in the 
water and looked into the pink palm as if reading 
an answer there. 

“Why, by my patient old-time teacher, and my 
present good friend, I suppose,” she said. 

“He will, with other matters, now too busy be 
any more to teach,” the German answered, falling 
more and more into the construction of his mother 
tongue as his excitement increased. “You remem- 
ber I some time ago the misfortune had my elder 
brother to lose?” 

“Yes, I remember quite well. I was very sorry 
to hear of it.” 

“Danke Ihnen, your sympathy very grateful is. 
Once when broken is the family circle it so goes 
quickly,” the Herr went on. “Since then death 
has very busy been in our family, already. My 
uncle, my cousin and his young son, have all since 
gone !” 

“Why — why then you are the Baron von Stein- 
berg!” gasped Pearl. 

‘‘Das ist zvahr! . Allow me to you to introduce 
Heinrich Fritz Emil Hans Herman Gustav von 
Steinberg, the new Baron von Steinberg, very much 
at your service, Fraulein !” 

“Had you not best throw some of those names 


DER HERR PROFESSOR GOES A-WOOING 251 


overboard?” laughed Pearl. “I am somewhat out of 
swimming practice.” 

“I am not, and I should not you any burden 
consider — ” he began, but Pearl broke in. 

“And what are your plans?” she said. “You 
will surely not leave that magnificent estate un- 
tenanted?” And a little shadow passed over the 
bright face which seemed all untouched by time. 

^‘Ach! Nein! Even so I my ancestral home 
did not love, there is the noblesse oblige. The Stein- 
berg name is as old as that of Hohenzollern ! The 
head of the family must his home at the castle 
make. Hort, Fraulein ! It is the blessing that out 
of my sad losses grows, that I at last can say what 
I have all these years in my heart shut ! I love you, 
liehling! Every since you a schoolgirl over yonder 
lived” — nodding in the direction of the seminary — 
“it has so been. Kommen Sie, and the mistress be 
of my castle on the Rhine !” 

“TBut — but I thought you liked Kitty Cresap!” 
stammered Pearl. She had nearly added, “And I 
am sure she thought so, too,” but loyalty to her 
friend stopped her. 

”Ach! Was machst duf Miss Cresap? She 
talented and beautiful is, and a fine friend. I have 
from her criticisms on my writings much learned, 
already. But Freundschaft one thing is, love an- 
other. The Fraulein Cresap like an eagle is, near the 
sun soaring, but I — I have for eagles no taste. You 


252 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


the dove resemble, home keeping and gentle. Wirk- 
lich! it is the kleine Hausfrau that I love!” 

The dove alowed herself to be drawn into a 
close embrace, and the black hair and the gold com- 
mingled. She had loved the German for years. 

“Heinrich,” she said hesitatingly, some time af- 
ter emerging from this eclipse, “if you cared for me 
all this time what made, you let me go from Heidel- 
berg without a word, and not even write to me?” 

“Ach! Liehling, what had I to offer your rich 
father’s daughter?” said the Baron, recovering 
his English construction. “And so long as I had 
nothing it would not have been right or honest to 
seek to win your love. Even now, I tell you of 
my prospects first of all.” 

“Well, I suppose that is just like your solid 
German good sense,” laughed Pearl, “but it is very 
poor sentiment.” 

“We Germans govern our sentiment by our 
sense. Perhaps it is as well for me that you Amer- 
icans do not, always, or I should long ago have lost 
my kleine Maedchen!” and Pearl underwent another 
eclipse. 

“Speaking of Miss Cresap,” said the Baron 
some time thereafter, “what has become of her? I 
called at her former home at the rectory, and was 
told that the family had left town and taken her with 
with them.” 

“Oh, poor Kitty has been having a most dread- 
ful time! I really feel guilty to be so happy when 


DER HERR PROFESSOR GOES A-WOOING 253 


I think of her. She went to Missouri last winter 
to visit her mother and sister. In the early spring 
she came back, and told me she had buried both of 
them. She did not tell me the details, but she looked 
perfectly heart-broken. Just think, she has lost all 
the relatives she ever knew. Father, aunt, mother, 
sister, all are gone. I never knew any one left so 
completely alone. It is lucky she is independent in 
a pecuniary way, at least. Mr. and Mrs. Courtney 
were so worried about her that when Mr. Courtney’s 
vacation began, late in June, I think it was, they 
whisked her off for a trip among the Rockies. They 
have not yet returned.” 

“Heinrich,” she added, with a coaxing nestle, 
“you have only one rival, and that is my music. I 
may keep on with that, may I not?” 

“Certainly. Music is a very feminine accom- 
plishment. You may find Germany changed. When 
you were over, much could be learned at Heidelberg, 
though Leipsic was perhaps the musical center. Now, 
I believe, it has changed to Berlin, at least one hears 
the best concert work there. Ach! Leihchen, the 
Barones von Steinberg shall have the advantage of 
the best instruction !” 

And this time the eclispe was more complete 
than any previous one. 

Kitty had not yet returned from her western 
trip when, in mid-October, the Baron and Baroness 
von Steinberg sailed for Europe. 



I * • ' » 



When Love Is Done. 


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CHAPTER XXVIIL 


‘‘The mind has a thousand eyes, 

The heart but one ; 

Yet the light of the whole world dies, 

When love is done!’’ 

The Courtneys, accompanied by Kitty, returned 
to Boston a few days after Pearl’s marriage. 

All the changing scenes through which Kitty 
had traveled had failed to rouse her, more than tem- 
porarily, from a sort of lethargy into which she 
had fallen. 

The grandeur of the Rockies, the beauty of 
its valleys, the sublimity of its waterfalls; the flow- 
ers and fruits of California; none of these could 
quite shut out of her consciousness the disgrace and 
death that had left her so desolate and alone in the 
world. 

Perhaps the most revivifying influence had 
been the wide sweep of the Plains, but these were 
soon left behind. Next to them she recalled most 
vividly the Mount of the Holy Cross. It seemed 
to her that her cross, too, was full of snow, wherein 
not even edelweiss could bloom. 

But the first breath of sea air that filled her 
lungs as she neared Boston brought with it a little 
thrill of joy. She did not stop to attempt its analysis, 

257 


258 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


her nature was too healthy for introspection, but 
as she caught the first glimpse of the Gilded Dome, 
the feeling grew into something like happines. 

But it was not altogether love for the beautiful 
and historic city of her adoption that brought on 
this mood. Some of the Boston papers had followed 
Mr. Courtney on his travels, and the remembrance 
of a short notice she had seen in one of them, early 
in their trip, came to her mind. Perhaps it had 
never been entirely absent from it, and was partly 
the reason her travels had failed to interest her. 
It had been sandwiched among the Harvard items, 
and was to the effect that Herr Steinberg had ar- 
rived in Boston and had announced his intention 
of spending some months in the city. Surely he 
was still there, and would make it a point to see 
her. 

Some days later she was strolling along Com- 
monwealth Avenue parkway, having managed to 
make her escape from her friends and their car- 
riage. She had come from a look at Copley Square, 
and was fighting an impulse to cross over to Beacon 
Street and visit Pearl. She was only a few blocks 
from her home. 

But she reflected that the home-coming of the 
rector of St. Paul’s had been announced in the papers. 
Surely Pearl was informed of it and would make 
the initial call. If she should go to Pearl’s in her 
present mood she would break down, and that she 
must not do. 


WHEN LOVE IS DONE 


259 


The beautiful mall was unusually deserted that 
afternoon, the air being raw and chill, but presently 
she became aware that a pretty and stylishly dressed 
lady was hastening to meet her with a smile of recog- 
nition on her face. 

“Now, Kitty Cresap, don’t tell me that I’ve 
changed so much that you don’t know me !” this oth- 
er exclaimed, holding out her hand. 

‘T won’t, for I remember you now. It is Nora 
Lathrop, is it not?” 

“It used to be. I am Mrs. Marion Fiske now. 
O, Kitty, we are all so proud of our old school- 
mate. There were a lot of us talking about it at 
Pearl’s wedding. About your last magazine article, 
I mean. We all thought it was grand !” 

“Pearl’s wedding! Is Pearl Dudley married?” 
exclaimed Kitty. 

“Possible you haven’t heard! The cards must 
have missed you. I suppose you know whom she 
married ?” 

“Really, I don’t. Who was it? And where 
are they?” 

“Why, she married our old Deitfsch Lehrer, 
Herr Steinberg. And just fancy! He is a baron 
now, and our little Pearl is the Baroness von Stein- 
berg ! They have sailed for Germany and are going 
to live in his castle on the Rhine!” 

That evening Kitty sat before the grate in 
her sitting room. It was a real fireplace, burning 
real anthracite, an open fire being one fancy she 


260 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


insisted upon. The evening was chilly and the glow 
played redly over the luxurious appointments of the 
room. One of the foremost magazines of the coun- 
try lay on the stand at her elbow. It contained 
her last article, the one Mrs. Fiske had lauded, and 
which was her own special pride. She had intended 
sending a copy to Herr Steinberg — and now — 

She took up the magazine and a silver paper 
knife that had been a gift of Pearl’s, but presently 
laid them back on the table, the leaves still uncut. 
Why should she read it? The words beating against 
her consciousness were not her own, but those of 
the greatest woman poet the world has ever known. 

She reached across the magazine and took up 
a well-worn Mrs. Browning, and with tear-wet eyes 
read the passage at which the book fell open, — 

“O my God, my God, 

O Supreme Artist, who as sole return 
For all the cosmic wonder of Thy work, 

Demandest of us just one word — a name, 

“My Father!” Thou hast knowledge, only Thou, 
How dreary ’tis for women to sit still 
On winter nights, by solitary fires. 

And hear the nations praising them far off. 

Too far — ay, praising our quick sense of love, 

Our very heart of passionate womanhood. 

Which could not beat so in the verse without 
Being present in the unkissed lips. 

And eyes undried because there’s none to ask 
The reason they grew moist.” 


WHEN LOVE IS DONE 


261 


The book fell from her lap as her voice trailed 
off into down-right sobs. 

Ah, gentle Kitty ! gentle Kitty ! So it has been 
ever since the sons of God came down to woo the 
daughters of men ! Is is the eternal law that, in- 
tellectually, women must look up and man down; 
and woe betide the family or nation when woman 
can no longer look up ! 


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Introducing an Old Friend. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 


“Men are only boys grown tall, 

Hearts don’t change much, after all.” 

“Well, so long, Will,” said the owner of the 
Bar-Circle ranch as he handed the thoroughbred’s 
lines to his foreman, and descended from the trap. 
“Take care of yourself, and likewise of the ranch.” 

“I’ll sure do both,” answered the foreman, turn- 
ing the trap around. “And take care of yourself. 
Judge. You are the brains of the Bar-Circle, and 
the carcass would mighty soon go into the sausage 
grinder if it lost its head,” he called back over his 
shoulder. 

The judge laughed, and strode down the plat- 
form of the little Western Kansas station, suit case 
in hand. 

The May day smiled over miles of untilled 
prairie, whose short young grass was still green 
as a lawn. The station itself was neat. Beside it 
was a little railroad park, wherein some box elders 
were making a brave fight for life. The air was 
crisp and bracing, the sky a far-off bowl of blue. 

The judge made for the ticket office. 

“Hello, Senator!” he said to a man coming 
out of its door. “Going up to the big village today ?” 

“Yep, are you?” returned the other. 

265 


266 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


“Yes. Glad we met. Been out getting close 
to the grass roots ?” 

“Yep,” State Senator Francis answered. “And 
you have been transacting some business, once re- 
moved, with them yourself, I take it.” 

“Yes. Been out to see how many mules the 
Bar-Circle can furnish toward filling that govern- 
ment contract. There isn’t nearly enough. I will 
have to go down into Missouri, to those counties 
south of Kansas City, and rustle some more.” 

“Look here. Judge, aren’t you afraid you’ll 
smirch your ermine? A Judge of the Supreme Court 
of Kansas taking a government contract to furnish 
mules! Shades of the unities, defend us!” 

“Why, I am just doing it from pure patriotism !” 
laughed the Judge. “I’m a pretty fair judge of 
mules, whatever I may be of the Supreme Court, 
and why should I not serve my country in that ca- 
pacity ? Uncle Sam won’t get cheated in the mules 
I buy for him. Seriously, the most abused party to 
the whole transaction is the mule himself. It won’t 
take the Philippines long to see his finish.” 

“Oh, I don’t know. That is what the Philip- 
pines were made for — darkies and mules. Good 
place to dump them both!” 

They were now walking up and down the plat- 
form, waiting for the east-bound train. The plat- 
form loafers, of whom even a Western Kansas 
town possesses a few, watched them curiously. They 
were each well worth looking at. 


INTRODUCING AN OLD FRIEND 


267 


Both men were distinguished looking, but the 
Judge was the younger, the taller, and the hand- 
somer of the two. The virile air of the Shortgrass 
Country was in the spring of his walk, and in the 
twinkle of his blue eyes. The tan of its wind and 
sun had browned his cheek. When he took off his 
hat to run his fingers through his close cropped hair 
you saw that its color matched his tawney mous- 
tache. 

As for the expression of their faces, if you had 
been a woman and obliged to ask a favor of one of 
them, it would have been the Judge to whom you 
would have addressed your appeal. 

“By gum!” his foreman was at that moment 
saying to an acquaintance he had picked up on the 
road back to the ranch, “By gum, but the boss is 
a corker! Why there ain’t a horse or colt on the 
place that won’t follow him all around by the time 
he’s been out here a week. And the new wild ones 
— well, it don’t take them long to find out who’s 
master !” 

“Did you ever notice,” he presently went on, 
“that a man that can manage a horse can always 
manage a woman, too? Well, it’s so, all heap samee ! 
Queer the Judge never got married. I was joshing 
him about it the other day, and he said if he ever 
could find a little girl he knew when he was a boy 
back in Missouri, he’d see about it. I said I guessed 
they raised as good girls in Kansas as they did in 


268 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


AHssouri, and he said maybe they did, and changed 
the subject.” 

“Queer a judge should own a ranch,” said his 
companion. “Shouldn’t think he could make it pay, 
and him way off at Topeka most of the time.” 

“Well, he says the ranch is one of his few 
luxuries, but fact is it does pay. The Judge is a 
mighty good business man. If I didn’t make the 
Bar-Circle pay the ranch would mighty soon have 
another superintendent.” 

Meantime the long through express from Den- 
ver to Kansas City drew up at the station. The 
Senator and the Judge got on the Pullman, and the 
train was soon slipping away through the fields 
of waving wheat, just heading out, for the ranch 
was on the western edge of the wheat belt. 

“That young Circuit Attorney, Folk, seems to 
be raising considerable of a row over in St. Louis,” 
said Senator Francis. “Seems a plucky fight, one 
man against the whole Democratic machine, grown 
rich and powerful with years of plunder. Let’s 
see, how long have the Democrats been on top in 
Missouri ?” 

“The last Republican administration was that 
of B. Gratz Brown, over thirty years ago,” answered 
the Judge. “But we can’t say much. According to 
recent developments the grafters of Republican Kan- 
sas can’t afford to call the Democratic boodlers of 
Missouri names. But there is this difference in the 
two states. When Kansas gets good and tired of 


INTRODUCING AN OLD FRIEND 


269 


her machine she will rise up and wipe it from the 
face of the earth in less than a month. But you 
can’t get an idea through Missouri timber as it 
sweeps over Kansas prairie. I fear one end of the re- 
form movement in Missouri will be dead of old age 
long before the advance wave reaches the edge of 
the clearing on the other side !” 

The Senator laughed. 

“How tersely you do put things, Judge! I 
reckon Missouri underbrush is a sad hinderance to 
advance of any kind,” he said. 

“But I hope Folk will keep it up,” the Judge 
went on. “If he does he will be the logical nominee 
for governor in 1904. The Democrats can’t afford 
to turn him down. It will be a confession that they 
don’t want honesty in their party. Missouri Repub- 
licans can’t beat Folk. They will win against any 
nominee the Democrats can put up — if they can stop 
quarreling among themselves long enough to act 
in concert.” 

“Well, it need not distress us Kansas Repub- 
licans if our party does win in Missouri, you know,” 
said Senator Francis. 

“I am Repulican born and bred, and it seems 
to me I should have chosen the party anyway, sim- 
ply on the strength of its record,” gravely answered 
the Judge, “but I don’t want to see our party win 
Missouri on that issue. The lesson of public re- 
buke to personal honesty would be more apparent to 
the masses than would be the reproof administered 


270 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


to a dishonest party by defeating it. No, Repub- 
lican as I am, I would rather see the Democracy of 
old Missouri cleanse their party and stay in it. It 
will be better for civic morals.'’ 

“I see your point, and it is well taken. It sure 
would be mighty discouraging to personal political 
honesty if its only reward is to be town lots in the 
New Jerusalem.! And what this country sure needs 
is honest men. It has plenty of smart ones!” 

“That is so, and it especially needs incorruptible 
men in its public offices,” answered the Judge. “But 
what it needs still more is a healthy public sentiment 
to back the prosecutors of boodlers and grafters. 
Now there are a lot of Missourians howling out that 
Folk is disgracing his state, as if the shame lay, 
not in the committing of a crime, but in the uncover- 
ing of it. When the man who is a good fellow on 
other people’s money is caught, there is lot of maud- 
lin sympathy wasted on him. No wonder boodling 
and grafting are protected when the exposer of a 
bribe drops lower in public estimation than the 
taker of it. The danger that threatens most is not 
the dishonest official, but the attitude of public senti- 
ment toward the man that shows him up.” 

“Well, you see,” the Senator said, “every man 
is afraid of hurting his business. If he can find a 
small sized scoundrel he is safe in helping to knock 
him down, but he fears to tackle the big thief who 
has grown fat and powerful at the public crib, for 
fear of a boycott of his business. All sections and 


INTRODUCING AN OLD FRIEND 


271 


classes would unite to fight a foreign foe. Like 
Tennyson’s merchants they would strike, if only 
‘with their cheating yard-wands,’ at any invader, 
but they are strangely apathetic to evil at home.” 

“Yes, we would all unite to repel foreign in- 
vasion or injustice. The Spanish war proved that. 
And we would lick the intruder, too. But it is no 
outside enemy that is our danger. The disintegrat- 
ing forces that destroy nations come from within, 
not without. Our gravest threat is the indifference 
of the cohimon citizen to his civic duty. If this coun- 
try falls it will not be from wrong voting, but from 
not voting at all. Our greatest safety lies in the 
ability of our intelligent common classes to see their 
mistakes in time to remedy them by their ballots. 
But the sacred duty and privilege of the franchise 
is often neglected, particularly in the great cities, 
and unfortunately by the very class whose vote is 
the most needed.” 

“As an instance in point,” he continued, “I had 
a young man in my office this winter who did janitor 
work for the wherewithal to pay his board while 
attending our business college. For several years 
a Committee of our citizens have provided us with a 
lecture course of really good quality. The boy had 
a season ticket, students obtaining them at reduced 
rates. 

“One night Senator Dolliver spoke on this very 
subject. Civic Responsibility. The next morning 
I had occasion to come down town early to get 


272 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


some papers to take with me on the eight o’clock 
train. The boy had the rooms cleaned up spic and 
span, and met me with a new inspiration on his face. 

“Well, Jenkins, how did you like the lecture?” 
I asked. 

“ T thought it was just grand, sir,’ ” he an- 
swered, modestly. 

“ ‘What idea particularly struck you?’ ” I said, 
thinking to find of what timber he was made. 

“ T seemed to get the most good out of what 
he said about Lincoln and McKinley,’ he answered. 
‘I can’t tell it like he did, but you know he said 
something about Lincoln being rather discouraging, 
taken as a pattern, because he was hardly to be 
explained on any other theory but that he was a 
direct providence of God, so great was the differ- 
ence between what he accomplished and any human 
preparation of his early life for it; but that Mc- 
Kinley was more of an average, and to be something 
like him seemed more possible to any young man 
who tried.’ 

“ T guess you are all right, Al,’ ” I said for I 
liked his remembering that. 

“Well, I missed my train, and when the boy 
came in at noon to tidy up, I looked to see if the 
inspiration still lit his face. It was gone. He looked 
as if he wanted to say something.” 

“ ‘Well, Al,’ I said, ‘still digesting Dolliver’s 
lecture?’ ” 


INTRODUCING AN OLD FRIEND 


278 


“ he broke out, distressedly, ‘the people 

at the club didn’t like the lecture ! One young lady 
said, at breakfast, that she wouldn’t give two cents 
to hear that dry old talk; and one young fellow 
said he could have done better himself !’ ” 

“ ‘He was badly mistaken,’ I said. ‘And as for 
the lady, well, she may make a good cook, and we 
men can take care of the country.’ ” 

He brightened up a little. 

“Come now, Al,’ I said, laughing, ‘I’ll bet you 
lost your temper at their stupidity, and told them 
what you thought of them.’ ” 

“ ‘Well, I nearly did,’ he said ‘at least I told_ 
them the lecture was magnificent, and I suppose 
that did reflect on their judgment pretty badly !’ ” 

“ ‘Look here, Al,’ I said, ‘I am glad you stood 
up for your convictions, but vinegar catches no flies, 
my boy, and you’ve got to live with those people 
till you find your level, at least. You had better 
smooth it over at dinner, hadn’t you ?’ ” 

He looked thoughtful. 

“ ‘I see what you mean, sir,’ he said, ‘and I 
see it is best. I’ll do it.’ ” 

Then he added, appealingly. 

“ ‘But the most of the audience did like the 
lecture, didn’t they, sir?’ 

“ ‘Sure. All who had the brains to comprehend 
it did, except the lady who was rebuked for coming 
in late, and possibly one or two of some other politi- 
cal party, and they were interested. The people who 


274 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


yawned over it measured their own ability by the 
yawns, not the speaker’s. 

“The lad looked so comforted that I put out my 
hand for a shake saying. 

“ ‘Don’t be too hard in your young judgments, 
Al. It takes all kinds of people to make a world.’ 

“I met him a few minutes afterward going 
down the street arm in arm with one of his club 
mates. But all the same I thought it was a bad sign 
for the nation that several young people, presumably 
average, and at least with some ambition to improve 
themselves evidenced in their attending a special 
school, were so indifferent to their civic duties as 
to find that talk dry.” 

“I think I see one of the most potent causes of 
that indifference,” said the Senator. “It is the tend- 
ency, unfortunately becoming more and more com- 
mon, to regard the luxuries as necessaries. They 
must be supplied, and patriotism, honesty, and all 
the old-fashioned virtues go down in the fierce com- 
petitive struggle to obtain them. And it is all so 
comparative that there seems no stopping place. If 
Mrs. Jones has a square piano, Mrs. Smith must 
have an upright, and Mrs. Brown routs them both 
with a grand. That’s the limit in pianos, I believe, 
but Mrs. Jones begins another round with some other 
piece of furniture which the other women must out- 
do; and Jones, Smith and Brown must furnish the 
sinews of war for the social combat — it doesn’t 
matter how!” 


INTRODUCING AN OLD FRIEND 


275 


“Well,” mused the Judge, “if all our citizens, 
present and to come, had the rugged honesty of a 
man I used to hear talk when I was a boy back in 
Missouri, our nation’s length of days would only 
be measured by the life of old Earth herself. He 
was a Cival War army captain and his wife was 
always at him to apply for a pension. 

“But he steadily refused to do so. He said that 
he foresaw a great danger in the whole pension busi- 
ness. He argued that a man who had really lost, 
in the service, through injury to health or wounds, 
the power to make a living, had actually parted with 
something that would be regarded, in any other em- 
ployment, as a money equivalent, and such a man 
could draw a pension without loss of self-respect, it 
being simply a debt owed him by the government. 
And he also said that the pension paid to such a 
person should be much larger than the pitiful pit- 
tance necessary to keep body and soul together.” 

“But he pointed out that there would be a host 
of others who would be tempted to place themselves 
on the pauper list by swearing to a lie and receiving 
money for which they had given no adequate equiva- 
lent, having received no injury in the service, and 
having been paid for their time at a higher rate than 
their unskilled labor would have commanded at 
home. Then, having departed from the strict line 
of integrity, the dry rot of pauperism would fasten 
on them, and through them spread to others, and 
the whole social structure would become undermined 


276 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


by dishonesty. I have often thought of his argu- 
ments, and questioned if some of his predictions had 
not already come to pass.” 

“There may be something in that, but there is 
a more striking instance of pauperism created by 
the mistaken kindness of the government, and that is 
in the case of the Indians. The ’whole course of 
the government toward them has tended tO' produce 
pauperism, and though they are, pro rata, the richest 
Americans today, they are paupers, pure and sim- 
ple,” declared Senator Francis. 

“Well, Francis, I am afraid you and I can’t 
get up enough of an argument to make things lively, 
for we seem to think alike on all these questions, and 
I particularly agree with you there. The govern- 
ment buys from the Indian an unrecognized title 
to certain lands which he never owned, or which if 
he did own, should have been bought and paid for 
at some price, years ago. Beside this. Uncle Sam 
pensions him off and thus enables him to evade 
God’s law that man shall eat his bread in the sweat 
of his brow. 

“But the government cannot avert from him 
the moral punishment of broken law. The Indian 
has been spared civilized manhood’s problems and 
tasks, and has missed civilization’s magnificent re- 
wards. And so, after more than a hundred years 
of this fostering care, education and every advantage 
fairly thrust upon the race, they have never, with 
the possible exception of the Hon. Charles Curtis, 


INTRODUCING AN OLD FRIEND 


277 


of Kansas, produced a single individual worthy of 
emulation or respect ; while the poor despised negro, 
taken from his own country by force, placed in 
slavery, deprived even of the fruits of the labor of 
his hands, and then set free penniless and ignorant, 
has produced, in less than half a century of freedom, 
a Henry O. Tanner, a Paul Dunbar, a Frederick 
Douglas, and a Booker Washington; a painter, a 
poet, a statesman; and a philanthropist!” 

“Hold on. Judge! I reckon you’ve started a 
subject now that we don’t agree on! My grand- 
father was a South Carolina planter, and I was 
reared in the Southern traditions, and I just can’t 
stand a nigger in any capacity but that of a servant. 
As a fellow citizen give me an Indian every time 
before a nigger!” 

“Oh, we are in for it now, I see! Well, I want 
them to have their rights as human beings, but I am 
not specially fond of their society, myself. Mrs. 
Stowe described the Northern feeling well when she 
represented Miss Ophelia as being leally much more 
averse to actual contact with Topsy than was Mrs. 
St. Clare. It seems to me the difference between 
Northern and Southern sentiment ciystallizes thus. 
The Northerner zvants the negro to he free and 
happy — A LONG WAY Off; the Southerner zvants 
him to he disfranchised and practically enslaved, 
CLOSE BYT 

“Then the black is not wanted at all in the 
North, nor in the South in any position which he 


278 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


will contentedly fill; and he had best clear off to 
Porto Rico or the Philippines, as I said a while 
ago!” triumphantly announced the Senator. 

‘Tt really seems to me I should infinitely prefer 
to go to Liberia rather than to live under the white 
man’s rule at all, if I myself were colored,” answered 
the Judge. “But the American negro does not feel 
so about it, and after forcibly importing him, it 
would certainly be adding injustice to injustice to 
forcibly deport him.” 

“Oh, the nigger’s feelings are not the thing to 
be considered, but the safety of the Anglo-Saxon 
race !” 

“Nobody can seriously hurt the Anglo-Saxon 
race except the individuals composing it,” answered 
the Judge, a little warmly. “It is like the govern- 
ment, if it goes downward the deterioration must 
come from within. If it is unjust to any weaker 
race, the wrong will surely react disastrously on it- 
self.” 

“Oh, you Northern people can theorize, of 
course, or base your conclusions on the facts fur- 
nished by the few and well behaved colored people 
you come in contact with at the North, but you 
don’t really know anything about the conditions as 
they exist in the South. The Southern people have 
a hard problem on hand, but if you will just keep 
your hands off, we will solve it to suit ourselves I”" 
The Senator was getting warm, too. 

“I have no doubt of it,” answered the Judge 


INTRODUCING AN OLD FRIEND 


279 


dryly. “But you say Sve.’ Does a Kansas State 
Senator speak of himself as a Southerner?” 

“My father fought to preserve the Union, sir,” 
answered the Senator, “but I was reared, till quite 
a lad, in the South, and my sympathies are with her 
on the race question. It is the business of her citi- 
zens. They know the conditions. Let them settle 
it. They will keep the odoriferous negro in his 
place !” 

“Well, now, I have been noticing for some time 
that Southern sentiment is coming North, and I 
have been trying to find out why. I believe it is 
partly that aversion to actual contact with the negro 
which is stronger in the Northern people than in 
Southerners. I suppose Providence knows its busi- 
ness, but it does seem to have prepared a fine en- 
tanglement when it permitted the greed of the earl) 
slave importers to make our country the home of two 
races, one of which has such a well developed nose, 
and the other so intrusive an odor. But I never 
heard of your people complaining of that feature 
in a slave. Why should it get so suddenly offensive 
in a freeman?” 

“The darkey stayed in his place in slavery!” 
exclaimed Francis. 

“If I have been correctly informed the house 
servants were all over their masters’ houses. They 
were personally in contact with their owners as 
ladies’ maids and valets. They were often nursing 


280 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


mothers to white infants. Did they have no odor 
then ?” 

“Oh, I reckon you want inter-marriage and 
miscegenation!” exclaimed Francis, losing his tem- 
per entirely. 

A dangerous flash turned the Judge^s blue eyes 
to steel .gray. 

“Steady, my friend, steady!” he said quietly, 
but there was warning in the guarded voice. “I 
have often noticed this curious thing about you peo- 
ple of Southern sentiment. On any other subject 
than this race question you are kind, sane and 
logical; but if any one attempts a defense of the / 
negro’s civil rights — mind you, I say civil, not social 
— you instantly flaunt the sex side insultingly. 
Abraham Lincoln must have been having his temper 
ruffled by this peculiarity when he said, “If I 
respect and advocate the just rights of the black man 
it does not follow that I must therefore take a black 
woman for my wife.’ ” 

Senator Francis made an effort to smooth down 
his temper, for he remembered that a case in which 
he was interested was likely to be carried up to the 
Supreme Court. 

“Well,” he remarked, “as I said before. North- 
erners just can’t see Southern conditions, nor appre- 
ciate Southern sentiments. The nigger will never 
be the white man’s equal, and the South will never 
stand to see our proud race swallowed up in a lot 


INTRODUCING AN OLD FRIEND 


281 


of mongrels and mulattoes. Nor will she ever sub- 
mit to negro domination.” 

“Now let us take your two bogies separately, 
and look at them coolly and dispassionately. The 
first, I take it, is the fear that American Anglo- 
Saxons will degenerate into a mongrel race of mulat- 
toes unless the negro is ‘kept in his piace,’ which I 
assume means deprived of his vote and the com- 
monest rights of citizenship. It is simply unthink- 
able that the white women of the South will ever be 
in danger of adding materially, if at all, to the 
mulatto population ! And even the men — do you, 
a defender of Southern sentiment, so unspeakably 
insult the white manhood of the South, as to say 
that the only way to prevent miscegenation is to dis- 
franchise and practically re-enslave the negro ? And 
if you do mean anything so outrageous as that, can 
you contradict statistics, which affirm that there is 
now only one mulato born to a white father, where 
there were ten so born in slavery ?” 

“But the blacks are increasing relatively. Why, 
in some counties in the South the blacks outnumber 
the whites.” 

“Only in a few localities in the black belt. Take 
Kentucky, for instance, as she is one of the states 
doing the most fretting over this question, and see 
how foundationless are her expressed fears. In that 
state the whites increased 17.1 per cent in the decade 
bet wen 1890 and 1900; while the blacks only gained 
6.2 per cent. There were seven times as many 


282 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


whites in Kentucky in 1900 as there were blacks. 
Of course the difference is less in the Gulf states and 
may be the other way in the black belt; but in no 
considerable district do the blacks outnumber the 
whites. 

“Then what becomes of your other bogey, negro 
domination? What do the Kentucky Democrats 
fear? Can one darkey whip seven whites? If he 
can, he ought to be allowed to do it. Does one 
colored man hold more property than seven whites? 
Has one colored man more intellect than seven 
white men? 

“No, Senator, you stated the truth in a nut- 
shell at the beginning of our talk. The South wants 
the colored race for servants. It has no use for 
them in any other capacity.” 

“Well, that is all they are good for. But Fll 
grant they are good in that relation. So good that 
their natural capacity as menials argues that the 
position is what they were created for. Why I would 
rather have one colored boy behind my chair at a 
hotel table than two white girls. It seems a pity to 
take them out of a sphere which they fill so credit- 
ably, to experiment with them in untried ways,” an- 
swered the Senator. 

“But come,” he said presently, “weVe saved 
the country. Let’s give our brains a rest. Come into 
the smoker and have one of these cigars. They’re 
really prime,” and they left the car and went for- 
ward. 


INTRODUCING AN OLD FRIEND 


283 


When the train arrived at the big village on 
the classic Kaw, and the two men prepared to leave 
the car, the Judge chanced to pick up his suitcase 
so that a silver name plate was turned outward. 
It read — ^John Raynor, Topeka, Kansas. 



Judge Raynor’s Find. 



CHAPTER XXX. 


“And the lawyers smiled, that afternoon, 
When he hummed in court an old love tune.” 

“ — And when long years from that day, 

Katie Eee and Willie Gray 
Stood again beside the book, 

Bending like a shepherd’s crook — ” 

Hummed Judge Raynor as he rode into the 
ford of the Pomme de Terre, and slackened rein that 
his horse might drink. 

“There’s the old sycamore,” he soliloquized, 
looking across the stream. “Good old tree, it’s stand- 
ing yet ! But where the deuce has the wind gone ?” 

The day was drawing to its close. The wind, 
which had been blowing fiercely all afternoon, had 
suddenly dropped to a dead, unnatural calm, that 
fairly made itself felt. A weird light that was part- 
ly darkness began to fall around. All the world 
seemed turning a sickly green. 

John looked up at the sky, or where the sky 
had been a short time before. 

“Well, I never saw clouds look like that, in all 
my life,” he thought. 

Just then a low, deep roar, vague and as yet 
unlocated, struck on his consciousness. He listened 


287 


288 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


a moment. It sounded like a heavily loaded freight 
train running through shallow water. Now it grew 
louder, and he could tell that it was coming from 
the Southwest. He turned in his saddle and looked 
in that direction, but the trees shut out the view. 
However, another glance at the clouds above decided 
him. 

“It is a cyclone, sure enough ! How lucky I am 
so near the cave! Can I get my horse into it?” 
He glanced at the path leading to the cave. Part 
of the way it was only a narrow ledge. “No, it is 
impossible, but I’ll give him all the chance I can!” 

He rode quickly out on the same side of the 
stream from which he had entered, and dismounted. 
With practiced hands he quickly slipped saddle and 
bridle from the horse, and struck him lightly with 
his riding whip. Wth a snort of fear the animal 
galloped up the road, and John turned and fled 
for the cave, pursued by a sound that seemed the 
meeting crash of earth and heaven. As he reached 
the cave’s mouth, a mighty tree, not ten feet behind 
him, snapped with a crack like near thunder, and 
fell directly across the path he had just traversed. 

He turned in the mouth of the cave and looked 
out.. Then, strong man that he was, he pressed his 
hands over his eyes and ears to shut out that awful 
whirl of motion and sound, and walked, to the back 
part of the cave. Even there the tremendous roar 
of the storm followed him. 

But shortly he noticed that the uproar was 


JUDGE RAYNOR’S FIND 


289 


getting fainter, then distinctly receding. He went 
to the opening and looked out 

Then he saw a strange and wonderful thing. 
Where, scarcely five minutes before, two feet of 
water had glided down the stream, the pebbly bot- 
tom of the creek lay bare! 

A noise upstream next attracted his attention. 
He looked in that direction and saw the water com- 
ing down from above in a nearly solid wall, several 
feet high. He watched it, fascinated. Soon the 
crest of the wave had passed him and the stream 
resumed nearly its normal appearance, except that 
the water, commonly so crystal clear, was dark and 
turbid. 

Then for the first time he looked across the 
stream. A path several rods wide was mowed 
straight through the timber as by some mighty re- 
volving scythe. The great trees lay prostrate, some 
this way, some that, scarcely no two having fallen 
in the same direction. 

The roar of the storm was growing faint in 
the northeast, and under it a curious, regularly recur- 
ring, tinkle began to beat against John’s dazed senses. 
He listened a moment. The sound was coming from 
the direction of the old sycamore. He looked that 
way. The tree’s giant stem had withstood the strain, 
but the resistless force of the storm had torn its 
great roots from the earth, and they lay uptorn, 
reaching nearly as high above the ground as did 
the crushed top at the other end of its great girthed 


290 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


bole. A shaft of sunlight broke from the western 
sky and shone directly on the spot, bringing an 
odd object plainly to view. Held high up by the 
roots interlaced about it was a stout looking wooden 
box, hooped with iron bands. One corner of it 
was broken open narrowly, and from this aperture 
dull yellow discs were falling, with a musical chink, 
on a pile of their fellows on the ground below. 

“Pll wager that’s some buried war treasure, and 
the owner never got back from the army to claim 
it,” thought John as he clambered over the fallen 
tree, a spirit of genuine boyish adventure beginning 
to work within him. 

He waded across the stream, though the current 
was strong. When he got to the tree he had to climb 
up into the roots to get at the box, and then so 
firmly were the roots intertwined about it, that he 
had to pull the rotting wood apart to get it out from 
among their clinging arms. As the box fell apart 
and to the ground he perceived a small parcel, ap- 
parently tied up in oilskin, on top of the gold. Get- 
ting down from the roots he picked it up, cut the 
thongs about it with his pocket knife, and undid 
several wrappings. In the last he found a parch- 
ment, discolored by time, but with its faded writing 
still legible. It read : 

“This treasure was honestly come by and it is 
my will that it should be used for the education 
and general benefit of my daughter, Katherine 
Cresap. RALPH CRESAP.” 



Judge Raynor’s Find 






1 


JUDGE RAYNOR’S FIND 


291 


John took off his hat, and looked up at the 
sky, now flushed by the sunset with innocent looking 
pink and gold clouds. 

“And your daughter Katherine shall receive it 
if she is alive!” he said almost with the solemnity 
of an oath. 

The next hour was the most strenuous, phys- 
ically, that the dignified judge had put in for a 
considerable time; but by night-fall, repeated trips 
across the stream had removed the gold to a safe 
hiding place in the cave. Then the worker, wet 
and mud-splashed, set out in the well remembered di- 
rection of the Cresap farm, which he was glad to find 
untouched by the storm. 

He had already heard, in a general way, of 
the family misfortunes, so was not disappointed 
when strangers answered his knock. They gave him 
a hearty welcome as a refugee from the storm, whose 
funnel shaped cloud they had seen pass not half a 
mile away; and they fell hospitably to work to 
make him comfortable. 

After supper the family gathered around the 
fireplace, in which a fire had been lit to drive out 
the cold following the storm, and the stranger was 
given a detailed account of the disasters which had 
overtaken the Carew family the previous year. 

“How odd — and pleasant — that little Kitty is 
not married,” reflected John as he laid his tired head 
on the pillow. 

“I’ll go to Boston myself,” he further decided, 


292 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


before the unusual tire sent his magnificently healthy 
physique into a dreamless sleep. 

The next day he got himself driven to Byson, 
bought two of the largest and heaviest grips he could 
find, hired a livery team, and went alone out to the 
cave, and got the treasure. 

Several days after he arrived safely at home 
with it. But he did not leave Missouri till he had 
bought those mules. 


A Whispered Crime. 





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CHAPTER XXXL 


* ‘Wrapt in the shadow of my crime, 

With withering heart and burning brain, 

And tears that fell like fiery rain, 

I passed a fearful time !” 

To go back to the previous autumn. 

The news of Herr Steinberg’s marriage seemed 
to have been the last straw that broke Kitty’s resist- 
ance to a low fever that had been hanging about her 
for some time, and the approach of the Christmas 
holidays found her convalescing from quite a serious 
illness. 

One day, while she was still weak and languid, 
a young married lady, between whom and herself 
a strong attachment had formed, came in to see her. 
The young wife was from Virginia, and she was 
urging Kitty to accompany her to her girlhood’s 
home to spend the holidays. 

‘T tell you, Kitty,” Mrs. Ralston said, “our 
house party will be just the thing for you. You need 
not dance if you don’t like. Your own people were 
originally Virginians, were they not?” 

“Yes,” answered Kitty, “and I really should 
like to see the places I have heard my father speak 
of so often.” 


295 


296 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


But after she had given her promise to make 
the visit, and the guest had gone, she remembered 
that her father had never mentioned the exact lo- 
cality of her grandfather's plantation. The only city 
he had talked about was Richmond, and yet Kitty 
had gathered an idea that his home was quite distant 
from that place. 

Her ignorance in this particular, she reflected, 
might cause her some embarrassment. Still, ques- 
tions were easily evaded in polite society, and she 
would, from the beginning, cultivate reticence about 
her affairs. Some curious impulse urged her to 
make the visit. 

Accordingly, Christmas week found her a guest 
in a genuine Virginia homestead in old King Will- 
iam County. The house, capacious, and with many 
sleeping rooms, sheltered a dozen guests, besides the 
large family. Among these Kitty was esteemed the 
guest of honor, both from her literary reputation, 
which Mrs. Ralston had taken care should precede 
her, and from the magnificence of her diamonds and 
furs. Her aunt's large collection of these enabled 
her to indulge a natural liking she had for them, even 
beyond the extent warranted by her ample fortune. 

The week chanced to be an open one, and every 
day the younger people rode the spirited horses kept 
on the place, and their elders drove out in the car- 
riages. Here again Kitty was pre-eminent, her 
horsemanship being conceded to be finest where all 
was good. 


A WHISPERED CRIME 


297 


Every other day they dined out at some one 
of the ancestral estates lying about them, sometimes 
so distant as to necessitate staying all night. On the 
alternate days they entertained other guests besides 
the house party. 

By New Year’s day the ladies were pretty 
thoroughly tired out, and were glad when the gentle- 
men arranged a hunting party for the afternoon, 
and left them at home for a rest. 

After lunch and a beauty nap, they all gathered 
in the big parlor, around a blazing open fire roaring 
up the chimney, itself as large as some modern 
rooms. Outside the clouds hung low and steel gray, 
and a few flakes of snow were beginning to fall. In- 
side, the firelight danced merrily through mistletoe 
and holly, and over the rich old-fashioned furniture 
and crimson hangings. 

‘‘Men are dears,” sighed one belle, as she sank 
into a great easy chair with willowy grace, “but it’s 
nice to have them out of the way, sometimes. Top- 
notch all the time is rather wearing.” 

“I suppose such a swarm of them as you keep 
about is rather fatiguing,” laughed Mrs. Ralston. 
“Now, folks, this is just the time and place for story 
telling. Mrs. Keith, you must lead off with the 
Keith ghost.” 

After some coaxing, the lady addressed com- 
plied. Then others took her place, and many ghost- 
ly thrills crept over the assembled guests. 

The ruddy firelight was beginning to get the 


298 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


better of the early fading daylight, when the hostess 
turned to an elderly lady, who, with her niece, had 
only arrived that morning. 

“Mrs. Vervair, I just know you know the ghost- 
liest ghost of all. Tell us about it, please.” 

‘T know a true story that is more thrilling than 
any ghost tale,” the white haired matron to whom 
this appeal was addressed replied. “By the way, it, 
too, has a ghost in it, but a very small sized one — 
an infant spook is a novelty, isn’t it? — But it is 
not a pleasant history. And it deals rather hardly 
with the worst aspects of our former ‘Divine Insti- 
tution.’ Perhaps it might .therefore be offensive 
to some one of your guests.” 

“Oh, we’ll overlook all that. Of course we 
know there were unpleasant features in slavery. But 
when it worked smoothly it must have been right 
comfortable for those on top,” laughed a gay young 
housekeeper, who was in the thick of an inexperi- 
enced wrestle with modern servants. 

vSuch a chorus of entreaty thereupon arose that 
Mrs. Vervair assented to the demand. 

Mrs. Ralston stirred the fire, and a shower of 
sparks flew, partly up the chimney, and partly out 
toward the circle of listeners, causing them to move 
back and find new positions. Kitty was sitting in 
the shadow somewhat apart. 

Mrs. Vervair was slightly deaf, and had not 
clearly caught Miss Cresap’s name among so many 
other strange ones. She only remained the one day 


A WHISPERED CRME 


299 


and night, and departed next morning entirely un- 
conscious of having wrought any effect on the life 
of a fellow guest. 

When they were all settled again Mrs. Vervair 
began. 

“Before and during the war there lived in the 
neighborhood of my girlhood’s home a family whose 
name I shall not reveal, but will call, for convenience 
in narration, King. 

“They were a prominent family in our county. 
For years the men had filled positions of honor and 
profit, and the women had been first belles, and 
then notable housekeepers and home-makers. 

“The King plantation, in the palmy days of the 
family, was a model of thrift and neatness. The 
fields were then even and productive, though, the 
last time I saw them, they were badly washed into- 
gullies, and appeared generally neglected. The house 
was a two-story brick, large and substantial looking. 
Its plainness was broken and relieved, and an air 
of distinction given, by the thoroughly Southern 
construction of the gallery or veranda. 

“This ran entirely across the broad front of the 
house, and was also two stories high. The massive 
monolithic pillars supporting it were of native red 
sandstone, and they extended from their bases to 
the second-story roof, the floor of the upper gal- 
lery being supported by niches cut in their sides. 
From base to ornate capital, their shafts were fluted 


300 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


or grooved, and as I have said, they lent an air of 
elegance to the place. 

“The inside of the mansion was in keeping. 
Handsome chandeliers, marble mantels, center ceil- 
ing decorations and frescoed walls attested to the 
taste and wealth of the builders and furnishers of 
the house. 

“Scattered about over the farm were the cus- 
tomary negro cabins, and back of the house were 
extensive stables, also of brick. Near the stables 
was a thick clump of tall pine trees, the home of the 
alleged ghost of this story. 

“The King family, in my generation, consisted 
of father and mother, four daughters and one son, 
the latter the youngest member of the family. 

“Colonel King was at that time a member of 
Congress, and Mrs. King was a chronic invalid, it 
being feared consumption had marked her for its 
victim. 

“The three older girls were handsome, conven- 
tional, well meaning sort of young ladies, who natu- 
rally took their places, as they grew up, of county 
belles. The second one, Anne, I remembered, was 
noted as a specially good girl, supplying her moth- 
er’s place as the head of the housekeeping depart- 
ment.’’ 

Here Katherine Cresap gave an involuntary 
start which was not noticed in the growing dusk and 
the general absorption of interest in the story. 

To tell the truth, she had settled down to listen 


A WHISPERED CRIME 


301 


to the story with a motive which always dogs lit- 
erary workers, despite their sometimes thorough 
tire of it, the wish to find material for future use. 
But now she began to take a personal interest in the 
narrative, a vague feeling of dread beginning to 
grow round her heart. Mrs. Vervair went on. 

“But the fourth girl was set apart, from her 
infancy, by a peculiarly stubborn yet quick temper, 
and an utter disregard of the rights and feelings of 
others. _ As a little girl, she was also very homely, 
and her handsome sisters probably helped to fix her 
unhappy disposition by slighting remarks about her 
appearance, one of their common names for her 
being 'The Ugly Duckling.’ 

“As this girl grew up she became practically 
uncontrollable. Indeed, it seemed nobody’s special 
business to govern her. Colonel King was absent 
from home most of the time. Her mother vibrated 
between the parlor and her bedroom ; and it was the 
creed of the family that she should be shielded from 
all worry. Her sisters and governess, finding them- 
selves utterly unable to manage her, at last gave her 
her head, and left her to follow her own bent. In- 
deed, the governess was dismissed when Eleanor 
was about fourteen, as a useless and unprofitable ex- 
pense.” 

At the name Eleanor, Kitty again started, and 
after that her attention became breathless. 

“Eleanor had her own riding horse, a big, black, 
ill-tempered brute, which none of the other girls 


302 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


could, or would, ride ; but which was docile and 
controllable by his young mistress. She spent many 
hours on this animal’s back, while her elder sisters 
were absorbed in the neighborhood gayeties, and her 
little brother, Ralph, too young to be any protec- 
tion.” 

The utterance of this name made apprehension 
a certainty in Kitty’s mind. She was listening to 
her own family history. She was to hear of the fatal 
circumstances that had sent her father’s life awry, 
exiled him from the companionship of those of his 
own ability and tastes, and sent him forth a wan- 
derer on the face of the earth. Her fingers inter- 
laced, and tightened till the blood left them, in her 
effort to be calm. 

“This young brother, however, seemed to be 
the only thing for which wayward Eleanor had any 
affection, and when she was about the house she 
and the boy were much together. 

“There was on the place an exceedingly hand- 
some young mulatto called Pierre, commonly cor- 
rupted and shortened into P’erre, pronounced as if 
spelled ‘Pear.’ He had been bought, when a boy, 
by Colonel King at a plantation sale in South Caro- 
lina, where the latter had chanced to be when the 
heirs of a lately deceased rich planter were selling 
off superfluous negroes. The child caught the fancy 
of Colonel King by his unusual beauty. His skin 
showed only the faintest taint of negro blood, and 
that was more the olive of the Spaniard or Mexican 


A WHISPERED CRIME 


303 


than the dusk of the negro. His hair was golden, 
silky, and straight; his eyes bright blue. He was 
popularly supposed to be the son of the dead man, 
who, though reared in France, was the possessor of 
a good old Saxon name, known and respected far 
and wide. The child’s fairness favored this theory. 

“Colonel King brought him home, and gave 
him the run of the house and stables, rearing him 
about as he would a handsome pet dog, a very un- 
fortunate thing for the boy, who grew up bright and 
cunning, early evincing a great talent for getting 
the better of his companions in trading their small 
possessions, and later in getting the blame for his 
tricks thrown on some of the other servants. 

“A peculiarity of the boy was that he spoke 
much in French, having taught enough of it to the 
other negroes to make himself understood; and be- 
ing encouraged by his young mistresses, who, on 
being told by a person competent to judge, that the 
boy spoke really good French, thought to benefit 
their own knowledge of that language. 

“It was rumored that his mother had been an 
exceedingly beautiful octoroon, the daughter of a 
French planter of Louisiana, who had reared her 
under his own tuition. Perhaps ,he had meant to 
free her, but death had come suddenly before it had 
been done, and she was sold with the rest of her 
father’s estate, and had become the property of the 
French reared planter with the Saxon name. She 
had died, however, while accompanying him on a 


304 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


trip to South America, and had never seen his home 
in South Carolina. 

“The winter this young mulatto turned twenty- 
one, Eleanor was in her sixteenth year. That was a 
season of uncommon gayety in our neighborhood, 
and the belles of it were the three elder Miss 
Kings. On the evenings when the sisters were not 
entertaining they were themselves invited out, and 
then Nell and Ralph were left practically alone with 
the house servants. P’erre was a fine banjoist, 
coaxing alternate mirth and pathos out of the in- 
strument with a master hand, and Ralph took a 
fancy to learn from him. The three spent many 
of the long winter evenings in the dining room, with 
none other present, and it often happened that after 
giving Ralph his lesson P’erre would play softly 
and soothingly till his boy pupil fell asleep on the 
fur rug before the fireplace. 

“As the spring drew on with warmer weather 
and shorter evenings, Nell would mount her horse 
soon after the mid-day meal and be gone all after- 
noon. She would return home toward evening, 
laden with wild flowers, which were the professed 
object of her long rides. It was observed by some 
of the negroes that P’erre was often absent from 
the plantation at these times, but they scarcely dared 
mention it to each other, and not to the white people 
at all. The colored nurse, known all over the plan- 
tation as ‘Mammy’ was especially uneasy, but held 
her peace. 


A WHISPERED CRIME 


305 


“About this time Nell's appearance began to 
change for the better. Her figure, hitherto too 
lanky for grace, took on curves of beauty, and her 
face softened and rounded till it, too, was beautiful. 
But it was clearly ‘beaute le diable.’ 

“Willfulness and insolence marred the expres- 
sion of her regular features, and her temper became 
still more peculiar, at one time being wildly gay, 
and at another sunk into the deepest despondency, 
often expressed by wild bursts of weeping. These 
moods being observed by her gentle sister Anne, 
she inquired into them ; but her questions were met 
with rudeness and repulsion ; and Anne, with a sigh, 
gave up the struggle with the untamed spirit, as 
she had often done before. 

“One day in early summer Colonel King came 
home after a long absence. He and his elder daugh- 
ters were sitting in the veranda after dinner when 
Nell passed hastily through, crossed the lawn, and 
disappeared in a clump of trees. Her father’s eyes 
followed her, at first curiously, and then with a 
startled look. 

“ ‘Girls,’ he said hastily, ‘did you notice 
Eleanor ?’ 

“ ‘So you see a change, too. Pa,’ said Anne. 
‘She is really getting quite pretty, isn’t she?’ 

“‘Pretty the devil! Are you all blind? Go 
and send Mammy to me instantly,’ hoarsely an- 
swered the Colonel. 

“The family nurse was accordingly summoned. 


306 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


and her testimony freely given when once ques- 
tioned, confirmed the Colonel’s suspicions. He gave 
orders to have P’erre locked in a stout cabin used 
as a prison for refractory slaves, and a guard set 
before the door; and then he saw Eleanor alone. 

“No one ever learned the details of that inter- 
view, though the storm of it echoed through the 
house; but at its end Eleanor was locked into her 
room, and orders given that she was to be furnished 
with only bread, meat, and water. 

“Then the Colonel took two strong slaves, noted 
for their cruelty and dislike of P’erre’s fine airs, into 
the prison cabin; and soon fearful sounds arose 
therefrom. Everyone on the place, if their duties 
permitted, got out of hearing; and those obliged to 
listen shuddered through it till the shrieks grew 
fainter and then stopped. 

“ ‘Laws, he jus’ swooned away, en cudn’t 
feel no mo’, so Massa jus’ tol’ us ter stop till ter- 
night. ‘Spect’ — explained one of the executioners 
when one negro, bolder than the rest, asked if 
P’erre were dead. But he stopped and would not 
finish his prediction. 

“After nightfall the three entered the cabin 
again. It was empty ! 

“The guards had been sent about their busi- 
ness after P’erre’s punishment, the Colonel judging 
that he had left his victim securely bound. The 
ropes, however, had been cut with a knife, and a 
part of a lower log removed from the side of the 


A WHISPERED CRIME 


307 


cabin most screened from observation, and enough 
earth dug away to enlarge the hole sufficiently to 
permit the passage of a body. 

“Instantly the whole plantation was aroused. 
The bloodhounds were loosed and taken to the hole 
in the cabin wall. They followed the trail to the 
edge of a creek, and there they lost it. They were 
taken up and down both banks for some distance, 
but could not pick up the scent. Leaving some of 
the negroes to continue the search, inspired to un- 
bounded zeal by the offer of freedom to anyone who 
should bring in P’erre dead or alive, the Colonel 
returned hom.e; but there was no sleep for anyone 
on the plantation that night, except in Mrs. King’s 
room, which was guarded from all knowledge of 
tlie disturbance. 

“Every negro, male and female, who could 
so much as be suspected of furthering P’erre’s 
escape was called up and whipped, and hideous cries 
startled some late passerby from a neighborhood 
frolic. It was whispered the next day that there 
were hardly enough unhurt slaves to do the house- 
work, and care for those crippled and sick from 
their wounds; and the plantation work came to a 
stand-still. Certain it is that no one of the slaves 
on the place that night could ever be induced to speak 
freely of its happenings for years. 

“The very next day a curious structure began 
to rise in the midst of the clump of pines back of 
the house. In its center a clearing about fifteen 


308 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


feet square was made, and here the walls of a hewn 
log room, or pen, began to go up. In a few days 
it was finished. 

“It was about twelve feet square and ten high. 
There were no openings whatever in the side walls 
save two small windows, each not more than a foot 
square, which were barred across with iron rods 
sunk into the casing. These were too high from 
the ground to be easily gotten at, either from within 
or without. In the nearly flat roof was a trap door. 

“The story ran that the erring girl was taken 
up on this roof by night and lowered into the pen. 
Some rude furniture and bedding were also put in, 
and then the trap door was securely locked down, 
and she was left to shift for herself. 

“Three times a day coarse food was passed in 
to her through the iron bars, and occasionally her 
father caused himself to be lowered down into the 
pen to take note of her health. One rumor had it 
that the girl soon developed fits of insanity in this 
lothsome place, and had to be chained to keep her 
from doing herself injury, and many claimed to 
have heard insane shrieks and laughter when pass- 
ing the plantation at night. 

“Mrs. King had been kept in entire ignorance 
of the whole matter, having been told that Eleanor 
had been placed in a Northern boarding school. Be- 
ing now confined to her room, it was the more easy 
to deceive her. 

“Things went on in this way for several 


A WHISPERED CRIME 


309 


months. Then one morning it was whispered about 
that the plantation mammy had been called up at 
midnight and lowered into the den, and that some 
curious young negroes, creeping near, had heard 
the wail of an infant borne out on the night air. 
They had watched till they saw ‘old Massa’ get 
down from the roof carrying a bundle from which 
a smothered cry issued, and walk away toward the 
timber with it in one arm, and a spade which he 
had picked up near the pen, in the other hand. Then 
they took flight for their cabins, and, getting under 
their scanty bed covers, drew them over their heads 
and trembled. 

“After that all again went on as before. No 
infant was to be seen or heard. 

“Though these things were whispered about 
among the white people of the neighborhood, no one 
thought of interfering. If this awful thing had 
come on Colonel King, he could not exceed his 
riglit to vengeance. And when they met him, only 
pity was felt for the evident breaking of his face and 
figure under the terrible strain. 

“One stormy autumn night when the wind 
howled, and the rain fell, a slanting and impene- 
trable veil, word went out that Mrs. King was dy- 
ing. The family gathered around her bedside and 
watched the whole night through, and Eleanor 
seemed to be completely forgotten. Just before 
dawn the mother died. 

“Next morning, while Colonel King' was pass- 


310 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


ing an open, but vine-screened kitchen window, on 
his way to the stables, he heard something that 
made him stop and listen intently. 

‘‘ ‘Aunt ’Meeley,’ a young darkey was saying 
to the cook, ‘Aunt ’Meeley, duz yo’ beleebe in 
ghosties ?’ 

“ ‘Shut up, boy, or Pse crack yo’s haid,’ re- 
sponded the cook. ‘W’at’s got inter yo’ ?’ 

“ ‘W’y, I seen P’erre’s ghostie las’ night, hidin" 
behin’ de stable. I did sho’ !’ he replied. 

“ ‘Well, yo’ bettah not let ol’ Massa heah yo' 
say dat er, er he’ll ghostie you’ !’ answered Aunt 
’Meeley. 

“Quickly the Colonel walked on to the stable 
and to the box of his swiftest hunter. It was empty. 
So was the stall usually occupied by Nell’s big 
black. 

“He rushed out of the stables and to the pen. 
A ladder lay beside it. He quickly raised it and 
was soon on the roof. The trap door was open, 
the pen untenanted ! 

“Hot pursuit was made. Details for Mrsv 
King’s funeral were neglected while messengers 
scoured the adjacent country. Telegrams were sent 
in all directions from the nearest railroad station, 
and everything that could be done in so isolated a 
place was done, but to no avail. 

“The two horses were found hobbled in a wood 
near the railroad station, but the fugitives were 
never heard of more. 


A WHISPERED CRIME 


311 


“Strange fatalities pursued the unfortunate 
family. Within the space of two years Colonel King 
had died in a fit of apoplexy while raging against 
his daughter ; and two of the remaining girls, find- 
ing themselves ostracized on account of NelFs 
crime, pined away and fell victims to their mother’s 
disease. 

“Then the last one of the sisters, Anne, married 
a planter from the the Far South, who loved her in 
spite of her desolation and disgrace, and took her 
away to his Southern home to forget them, but in 
less than a year word came back that she, too, was 
dead. 

“When Ralph, then a boy of sixteen, was told 
that Anne was to be married, he ran away and 
joined the Union army — the war was by this time 
going on — as a drummer boy, and he, too, was 
never again heard from, and if he lived, himself 
probably never heard of Anne’s death. 

“The plantation fell into the hands of strangers, 
and the family history passed into tradition. The 
new comers, from some strange fancy, let the cabin 
stand, hidden by the mournful opines, though rumor 
had it that on every anniversary of the birth of the 
negroid child, an infant’s wailing cry hung around 
it all the night long, seeming to come from all about 
it at once. 

“I have said that Eleanor and P’erre were 
never heard of more. I meant that the neighbor- 


312 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


hood never saw or heard of them again, but I my- 
self saw them once afterward. 

“One day some years later, I was in Paris 
watching the gay equipages roll through the Bois de 
Boulogne, when my notice was attracted by a par- 
ticularly handsome turnout in which sat a fine look- 
ing man of about thirty years of age, and a stylishly 
dressed young woman of beautiful features, but 
peculiar and rather repelling expression. My com- 
panion observed the direction of my gaze. 

“ ‘There goes one of the richest couples in 
Paris,’ he said. 

“‘Indeed? Who are they? Their faces are 
strangely familiar, both of them,’ I answered. 

“ ‘It is Monsieur Duane De Witt, the rich 
banker, and Madame, his Avife,’ answered my friend. 

“The carriage containing them had turned and 
was coming toward us again. I looked more close- 
ly, and recollection came to me in a flash. The 
woman was the Eleanor of my story, and the man 
was the formerly nameless slave, Pierre. 

“I held my peace, however, and after that I, 
too, never saw or heard of them again.” 

The end of the tale had been told in darkness, 
save for the firelight. At its close everyone drew 
a deep breath. 

The clatter of hoofs, and halloos in the side 
yard, proclaimed the return of the gentlemen ; 


A WHISPERED CRIME 


313 


and in the confusion of ringing for lights, and the 
coming in of the men, Kitty made her escape, un- 
observed, to her own room. 



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Kitty Disposes Her Auftt's £stato« 






CHAPTER XXXIL 


Kitty made no problem of it. From the first 
moment of certainty that her benefactress had been 
the Eleanor Cresap meant in her oath to her father, 
she had no other thought than to give up her aunt’s 
estate; but to whom? That was the only question, 
but it was a puzzling one. 

From Mrs. Vervair’s narrative, she had learned 
that all her father’s immediate family had preceded 
him to the grave. She knew of no collateral branch. 
It would be simply impossible, by reason of the 
chaotic state of the family connections of slaves be- 
fore freedom, to find any relatives of the unhappy 
Pierre, afterward known as Duane De Witt. Cer- 
tainly the property belonged in no way to her own 
mother’s people. What would be the best disposi- 
tion to make of it ? 

She considered carefully. The estate had been 
given to her because she was Ralph Cresap’s child. 
If she could make up her mind what her father 
would have wished her to do with it beyond the 
mere giving it up, that thing she would do. 

It was while following this chain of reasoning 
that a memory and an inspiration suddenly came to 
her. 

She recalled a conversation she had once heard 


317 


318 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


between her father and a neighbor on the pension 
question. When Captain Cresap got on that topic, 
he had been wont to rather monopolize the conver- 
sation. His daughter remembered even now the 
substance of his language on that occasion. 

“There is a class of citizens who, through no 
fault of their own, both need and deserve help,” he 
had said. “I refer to the aged mothers of the lower 
middle classes, and of the downright poor. They 
have spent their working years in rearing citizens 
for the state, have toiled hard and uncomplainingly, 
and practiced all the economy in their power, but 
never having had direct control of any money, have 
found it impossible to save any. To be sure, the 
children they have reared are their first and great- 
est debtors, and should care for them, but in some 
cases they won’t, and in many others they cannot, 
having themselves just set out to battle with life 
empty-handed. 

“Then ‘there’s a deal of human nature about 
folks,’ and the young people will marry. It is prob- 
ably the least of two evils that they should. But 
then there is no place left to offer the aged mother 
but a share in their own home — and no house was 
ever yet built big enough to shelter two mistresses 
comfortably. Besides, no woman should be required 
to bring up two families, or even to aid in bringing 
them up. 

“As these women have given their best years to 
the state, the state owes them a comfortable living 


KITTY DISPOSES OF HER AUNT’S ESTATE 319 


for their declining years, and there would be no 
pauperism in their accepting it. 

“But I would not have the aid take the form of 
a pension, for the unselfishness of mother-love 
would probably give the greater part to the children, 
and so not only defeat the purpose of the benefac- 
tion, but actually prevent it. I see nothing for it 
but Old Ladies’ Homes, and if I had a million or 
two I would endow one.” 

This memory settled the question to Kitty’s 
complete satisfaction, and soon after her return to 
Boston, the site of the institution was chosen in a 
quiet old town in the interior of the state ; and here, 
in the center of a large lawn dotted with century-old 
New England elmiS, the stately walls of the Ralph 
Cresap Mothers’ Rest presently began to rise. 

And Kitty set to work in earnest to make her 
living with her pen. 



A Soul’s Search for Light. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 


'Tn the breaking gulfs of sorrow, 

When the helpless feet stretch out, 

And find in the deeps of darkness. 

No footing so solid as doubt — ” 

''Bin feste Burg ist Unser Gottf' 

It was well for Kitty that she had to go to work 
in earnest, for she now began to pass through the 
labyrinth of doubt that most honest souls wander in 
for a time at some period of their lives, and work 
kept her from growing morbid. 

She stood face to face with the old insistent 
problem that has vexed mankind for ages; how a 
God who* is at once all-powerful and all-kind can 
permit some of the deeds that the sun looks down 
on by day, or the stars pass above at night. 

She examined the faiths and creeds of all the 
world and of all times. For a short space, the ap- 
parent justice of Theosophy, with its reincarnation 
of lives, each begun on the plane where the last left 
off, attracted her. Yet surely there was no immor- 
tality in its theory of progressive, disjointed earth 
lives, each with no recollection of the others except 
in those strange flashes of memory that so evade 

323 


324 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


analysis, when one seems to have before done, or 
said, or seen the thing that engages us now; which 
phenomenon has been explained by other theories 
quite as plausible. 

No, Christianity was the only religion that at 
all fitted the facts, or answered the needs, of life. 

But what successive absurdities had been tacked 
onto it. There was Spiritualism. Well, if the 
gifted souls it professes to call back to earth are 
going to talk such drivel as its revelations attribute 
to them, they had better be annihilated at once to 
prevent further retrogression. 

Then there was Christian Science. Kitty re- 
membered that she had never taken a disease in her 
life that she had dreaded or worried over before- 
hand. In that and all other matters, it was invari- 
ably the unexpected that happened to her. 

It happened now. One morning she was sit- 
ting in her room at the rectory, which she had re- 
tained through good and ill fortune, trying to fix 
her mind on a pot-boiler she was writing, when a 
gentleman caller was announced as awaiting her in 
the parlor. 

She thought from his not sending up his card 
that it was an editor she knew, whose steadfast 
friendship actually led him to the length of per- 
sonally asking for an article for his magazine now 
and then, and whose checks had aided her material- 
ly since giving up her aunt’s fortune, nearly a year 
ago. 


A SOULES SEARCH FOR LIGHT 


325 


But when she entered the drawing-room she 
thought it an entire stranger who rose to meet her 
and came forward with extended hand. 

“Puss/’ he said, “don’t you know me?” and 
not content with the hand she gave him, he possessed 
himself of the other one. 

Kitty grew pale with feeling. Only someone 
who had known her in her father’s lifetime could 
call her by that name, and her memory went back 
to her childhood. 

“Why, it is John Raynor!” she cried. “How 
strange that you should grow up.” 

“Not at all,” he laughed; “you have done some 
growing yourself, little Puss.” 

The name repeated again, brought the memory 
of her father to her vividly. 

“Mr. Raynor,” she said impulsively, her hon- 
est hazel eyes appealing to the blue ones only a 
little above the level of her own, “you too, loved 
my father, did you not?” 

The hands that could hold the reins steady over 
a pair of bucking bronchos held hers in a tender, 
understanding clasp, and the look his fellow men 
had learned to respect came into his face as he an- 
swered. 

“Miss Cresap, your father was one of the few 
men I honored and admired equally with my own.” 

“Thank you.” She made an effort and re- 
gained control of herself, and they sat down and 


326 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


indulged in an exchange of reminiscences, and a 
short sketch of each life. 

‘T suppose Firefly and Tige have gone the way 
of all flesh,” he remarked. 

“Yes, they died at a ripe old age, and within a 
few weeks of each other. I mourned them very sin- 
cerely. And have you ‘gathered that gear’ yet?” 

“A pretty fair portion of it,” he answered. 
“The Bar-Circle Ranch is one of the most valuable 
properties in W estern Kansas ; and I have some land 
in the Pittsburg coal fields, and some oil wells at 
Chanute. Southeast Kansas is growing steadily in 
production and wealth, but for a place to live, give 
me the breezy Shortgrass Country, where you can 
see what is coming at you ten miles away.” 

“So you are a judge of the Supreme Court of 
Kansas. I suppose I shall hear of you as her gov- 
ernor next.” 

“All things are possible in Kansas, even big 
mistakes,” he laughed; “but I don’t know that my 
ambition runs that way. You see a governor may 
be, and often is, an accident; but a judge of the 
Supreme Court is rarely, if ever, so.” 

“Speaking of property,” he added, “reminds 
me of the errand on which I came to Boston. Did 
you know that you were an heiress?” 

Then he went on to tell her of the cyclone and 
its wonderful revelation. 

The tears brimmed in Kitty’s eyes as he fin- 


A SOUL’S SEARCH FOR LIGHT 


327 


ished by handing her the stained parchment that 
was her father’s last will. 

“Yes,” she faltered, “this in his own hand- 
writing.” 

Then she rose hastily, and went toward Judge 
Raynor, who rose also. 

“Mr. Raynor,” she cried, as one who must 
have help, her usual calm self-restraint breaking 
away again, “what do you really believe? Where 
in all the universe is my father?” 

And again he did not fail her. 

“In that realm prepared for the ‘spirits of just 
men made perfect,’ Miss Cresap. Can you doubt 
it?” 

“The spirits? That is just my trouble. I air 
fleshly and weak, and when I meet my father ^ 
to see him as he was here, only glorified.” 

“My dear child,” he said, “so you will one day 
or rather when days are done. Have you never read 
the fifteenth of First Corinthians? What does your 
Creed say ? Does it not declare its belief in the 
resurrection of the body?” 

Kitty gasped. She had read all about the Bible, 
but in common with many of this generation had 
neglected to attentively study the book itself. And 
the Creed of Christendom that she had repeated 
every Sunday for many years had grown so fa- 
miliar that she had actually overlooked any meaning 
in some of its clauses. 

“The Communion of Saints; the Forgiveness 


328 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


of Sins ; the Resurrection of the Body ; and the Life 
Everlasting — ” she murmured. “Why I — I hadn’t 
noticed, I fear.” 

“I think I understand,” said the man from Kan- 
sas ; “you grew familiar with it so early in life that 
you did not give it much thought. Now, I never 
happened to hear that grand confession of faith, 
though I was reared in the Methodist Church which 
acknowledges it, till I was a man grown, and began 
to feel the need of help higher than any this world 
can give. One day when this mood was unusually 
insistent, I chanced to enter one of your churches. 

“When the Creed was recited in the course of 
the service, I said, ‘Here is the answer to my need.’ 
I studied its origin, and found it was compiled by 
men far wiser and holier than I can ever hope to be, 
and who had, beside, the advantage of standing cen- 
turies nearer to the facts. I therefore adopted it for 
my own steadfast faith.” 

Again Kitty bowed in spirit. While she, in 
cultured Boston, with the largest circulating library 
in the world at her service, had been studying faiths 
and isms, this man in the W est, with his law library 
perhaps only supplemented by his Bible and prayer 
book, had sailed straight into the spiritual harbor, 
and was anchored fast to the Rock of Ages. 

But her mind reverted to her aunt’s history, 
which was the real stumbling block in her path. 
In the brief resume of her life she had given Judge 
Raynor she could not tell that. But her inward 


A SOUL’S SEARCH FOR LIGHT 


329 


necessity urged her on, and she cast about for some 
delicate means of expressing it. 

“But there are some things it does not seem 
right for God to order or even to permit ; things like 
the Sepoy rebellion, or our own Indian massacres, 
or others — ” 

He started forward and took her hands in his 
again, and once more spoke from his even common 
sense. 

“Now, little girl,” he said, “don’t make the 
very common mistake of throwing the responsibility 
for man’s blunders on God. The Sepoy mutiny was 
the logical outcome of bad and arrogant governing, 
and it caught those who happened to be nearest; 
and the most dreadful features of Indian massacres 
were the fault of the men who exposed their women 
kind to such dangers, and not justly to be laid at 
the door of Providence.” 

Kitty thought a moment and then looked up, 
radiant. 

“Why, how that helps me ; and yet how stupid 
of me that I did not see it for myself. Once a dread- 
ful thing happened, and the knowledge of it has 
tried my faith severely, but I see now it was the 
direct result of the slavery God must have abhorred, 
and in no way chargeable to Him.” 

“It is beautiful to hear practical men in the 
midst of the battle of life talk as you do. Judge 
Raynor,” she presently added. “I have been observ- 
ing things quite a while, you know, and some years 


330 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


ago many men seemed to regard Christianity as only 
fit for women and children; but lately, particularly 
since McKinley’s death — which seems to make it 
an unconscious martyrdom — our brainy men, not- 
ably our political leaders, almost invariably take 
occasion to express their belief in the good old 
orthodox faith of Christ and his church. Do you 
think it is sincere, or only done for effect?” 

‘T believe they mean it. Christianity is the 
only belief that can keep a great mind entirely sane ; 
the only thing that gives weight and dignity to liv- 
ing; the only thing to which the facts of life and 
death will adjust.” 

“But come,” he added, “my time is limited, 
and I must see what I can of Boston. You will be 
my guide, will you not? And how shall we set 
about it ? I wish I had my automobile here, but 
we will have to do next best. Will you ride or 
drive?” 

“Oh, I should like to ride. It will seem like 
old times,” exclaimed Kitty ; and a ride out Auburn- 
dale way was arranged for that very afternoon. 

“I trust Mrs. Raynor is well,” she said as he 
rose to go. 

“My mother has good health, and is wonder- 
fully well preserved for her years,” he answered. 
“She will be so glad to hear of you.” 

“Remember me most kindly to her ; but I meant 
Mrs. John Raynor, your wife, you know.” 


A SOUL’S SEARCH FOR LIGHT 


331 


“But I don’t know. There is no Mrs. John 
Raynor,” he said. 

Kitty thought she had never seen the drives 
between Boston and Auburndale look so beautiful 
as they did on that autumn afternoon. 



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“If we start now we will be in time to see the 
wind waves chase the cloud shadows over 
the wheat fields of Kansas!” 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 


“Come away, come away ! 

When such lovers meet each other 
Why should prying idlers stay?” 

There are no women so attractive as those 
made up of a well-balanced proportion of fire and 
dew. 

Katherine Cresap had always been beautiful, 
but it was with a somewhat cold, crystal clear purity 
that failed to appeal to many men and some women. 

But as the Autumn passed into winter, and let- 
ters from Topeka grew more frequent and more 
warm, her face softened and bloomed until, despite 
the fact that she was no longer in her first youth, 
it grew inexpressibly attractive. 

Her very step lightened, and her laugh rang 
out often. Only those who have passed through a 
real heart-break can appreciate the value of a hearty 
laugh. 

Until some months before her western trip 
Herr Steinberg and she had kept up an intermit- 
tent correspondence, and exchange of their writings. 
His letters had always made her think of great 
things. When she received John’s she did not think 
at all, she only felt. 

Once when reading one of Judge Raynor’s 

335 


336 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


letters she did not know that her eyes were grow- 
ing moist till they brimmed, and a tear dropped 
on the written page. 

“Now what in the world can I be crying 
about?” she thought. “There is surely nothing in 
such an optimistic yet practical letter to call for 
tears !” 

She found out one evening in late winter, when 
a series of floods and a pressure of business had 
delayed John’s letter for some days. There is noth- 
ing like a little neglect, real or fancied, to open the 
eyes of the heart. 

Mr. and Mrs. Courtney had gone out, and she 
was in the drawing-room alone. She had been 
softly playing and singing that beautiful but little 
known ballad, “The Rose-bush.” As the last “And 
the years glide by” died on the air she whirled the 
piano stool about, and her eyes fell on the blue 
velvet head-rest against which John’s golden hair 
had rested. 

Some impulse drew her across the room to it, 
and she stroked it softly with her hand. 

Then she knelt and laid her cheek against it. 
A knowledge came to her while on her knees there, 
and when she rose she consciously faced the terrible 
hunger and thirst of love. 

“John, John!” she murmured with that ten- 
derness that makes the loved one’s name the sweet- 
est v7ord on earth. Then she knelt and kissed the 


HE COMES TO WOO 


337 


blue velvet softly, and turned and went to her 
own room. 

There she sat down before the fire to consider 
what she knew meant her lifelong happiness or 
sorrow. 

What fearful power the feeling had gathered 
already! She could have always controlled her 
fancy for Herr Steinberg. Her love for John con- 
trolled her. For the first time she understood and 
really forgave Eloise. 

She recalled John’s letters and was comforted 
to remember phrases in them that surely meant 
more than friendship. She had suffered much, but 
all the past would be as nothing compared with 
the terrible emptiness of her life if he went out 
of it. 

After sitting long before the fire she went 
again for sympathy to Mrs. Browning. Turning 
to the “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” she read and 
re-read the one so exactly expressing her mood : 

“Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand 
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore 
Alone upon the threshold of my door 
Of individual life, I shall command 
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand 
Serenely in the sunshine as before. 

Without the sense of that which I forbore — 
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land 
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine 


338 


THE CRESAP PENSION 


With pulses that beat double. What I do 
And what I dream include thee, as the wine 
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue 
God for myself, He hears that name of thine. 
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.” 

Several months later John and Kitty again 
stood in the drawing-room of the rectory. 

“But you must wait till Autumn,” Kitty was 
saying. “Really I can’t get ready in a day !” 

“Then you may have two,” he laughed, “but 
that’s the limit.” 

Then he drew her to his breast and laid his 
face on her’s. 

“You are going home with me, and you are 
going right now,” he said in the compelling master 
tone to which gifted women love to bow. “Our 
mother is waiting for you. We will see her first, 
and then go out to the Bar-Circle to spend our 
honeymoon ; and if we start now we will be in time 
to see the wind waves chase the cloud shadows over 
the wheat fields of Kansas !” 

THE END. 




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